Spam King and the zombie computers

Timesonline release :

You have probably never heard of him – but you have almost definitely had a message from him land in your inbox.

Robert Soloway, known as the “Spam King” for the billions of unsolicited junk emails he has sent worldwide since he started his illicit empire, has been arrested in America. His internet reach was so extensive that police say most computer users will have received at least one of his messages in the past four years.

Mr Soloway, 27, is accused of hijacking thousands of computers, infecting them with malicious viruses, and then using them to flood inboxes with torrents of spam. His fraudulent empire funded a life of luxury including a 17th-floor water-front luxury apartment in Seattle and a top-of-the-range Mercedes Benz.

“He is one of the bad ones,” John Reid, an investigator with the European antispam organisation Spamhaus, said. “He’s one of the longest running and uses criminal methods all the time. Anyone on the web for a while would have received one of Soloway’s spams.” Experts say that about 70 billion spam messages are sent every day worldwide.

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