Spam hunter falls victim to suicide note attack

Cyber criminals have attacked a Swiss IT expert by circulating a fake suicide note in his name in response to a blog he set up to combat internet viruses and spam.

According to the government’s cyber crime unit, this is the first example of a “revenge” attack by internet criminals against a Swiss individual. Switzerland is currently the focus of increasing waves of attacks by spammers.

Twenty-one-year-old computer specialist Roman Hüssy from Wallisellen, canton Zurich, got the fright of his life last Tuesday when he was woken up by police officers at 2 am checking on his whereabouts.

Just one hour earlier hundreds of thousands of computers in Switzerland and abroad had received an email from Hüssy that announced his imminent suicide and threat to kill his girlfriend and a lover. The Zurich police then received hundreds of callers and emails worried about the young Swiss.

The message turned out to be a fake – known in the industry as a “joe-job”, a spam attack using spoof sender data and aimed at tarnishing the reputation of the apparent sender.

The suicide note was part of a series of internet attacks Hüssy had sustained since the end of July in response to his blog (www.abuse.ch), set up at the beginning of the year to inform the public about new viruses, phishing, malicious software and other internet dangers.

Shadowy empire

The Swiss IT specialist suspects an online hosting empire, the Russian Business Network, to be behind the attacks.

“I know that it’s a dangerous group and I had mentioned its existence on my site. I imagine they want to shut me up,” he told Le Temps newspaper.

According to the British Observer newspaper, the Russian Business Network (RBN) is blamed for 60 per cent of all global online crime – in essence, the online nexus for worldwide identity theft, child pornography and spamming.

Marc Henauer, head of a coordination unit on cyber crime at the Federal Police Office, was not sure the RBN were to blame for the attacks on Hüssy, but felt it was probably an eastern European group with ties to the RBN.

“It’s a retaliatory measure against Mr Hüssy based on what he published on his site. The group we think is behind it is the same one that has been swamping Switzerland with malware emails over the past 12 months,” he told swissinfo.

“The RBN is a rather heterogeneous conglomerate. The group involved in these e-banking attacks, which Hüssy was warning about, is known to have used the RBN infrastructure. It’s probably not a direct member of the RBN, but it has ties to them.”

Even if he is a lone protestor, Hüssy is outspoken and is focused on the group carrying out e-banking attacks and was “hampering their business model”, said Henauer.

Hüssy has filed a complaint against the unknown internet attacker with the Zurich police.

Cyber storm

Switzerland is currently in the eye of the cyber storm. According to the computer security firm MessageLabs, Switzerland is the number one target for spam and viruses.

In July Switzerland was the most spammed country by percentage of infected email: 84.2 per cent of all Swiss email contained spam, compared to 75.1 per cent worldwide. And one in 60.5 Swiss emails contained a virus.

Since March 2008 the cyber crime coordination unit has issued nine security alerts concerning spam attacks against Swiss computers.

And in June the Federal Police Office announced that the number of suspected cases of cyber crime in Switzerland had risen by 61 per cent last year compared with 2006.

The rise is the result of a wave of spam targeting online banking systems in Switzerland and suspected internet child pornography.

Henauer plays down the current increases, however.

Targeted

“I wouldn’t say the situation is getting worse in Switzerland. Most of the security alerts were related to the group sending spam to attack Swiss e-banking users. It’s getting more professional, specific, and targeted,” he said.

But Switzerland is an obvious target for cyber criminals, he admitted.

“We are one of the most inter-connected countries. A lot of computers are always on so there is a lot of bandwidth, which is very useful if you want to build a botnet, for example [a remote-controlled network of “zombie” computers used to send spam or launch cyber attacks on websites],” said Henauer.

Despite the difficulty of keeping pace with internet developments, Henauer feels the federal authorities are making headway in their fight against cyber crime.

“From an analytical point of view, in terms of trying to figure out how things work and what kind of businesses could be attacked and how, we keep up rather well,” he said.

swissinfo, Simon Bradley

Key facts

Phishing: Fraudsters phish in order to gain confidential data from unsuspecting internet users. An example is account information from online auctioneers or access data for internet banking.
Malware: Comes from the words “malicious” and “software”. This is a generic term for software that carries out harmful functions on a computer, such as viruses, worms or Trojan horses.

Cybercrime in Switzerland

The government has set up a special unit within the Federal Police Office to coordinate the fight against cyber crime.

In response to a government decision in 2003, the finance ministry, alongside the Federal Police Office and the Swiss Education & Research Network, launched a reporting and analysis centre for information security.

A new law came into force in April banning spam.

Advice

Always keep anti-virus software updated.

Keep your operating system on the latest level of patching.

Use firewalls. Back up your data.

Keep a close eye on emails. If you don’t know where one has come from and it has an attachment which you are not sure about, delete it.

Caution on using links in emails. They may lead to websites that have been set up to cause you damage.