- Jul 22, 2014
- 2,525
River City Media, an email marketing company that was reported last month as allegedly one of the world's largest spam operators, has filed a lawsuit against the security researcher who made the revelations.
At the center of this lawsuits are two articles, one published on CSO Online, entitled "Spammers expose their entire operation through bad backups" and on the MacKeeper blog, entitled "Spammergate: The Fall of an Empire."
In these two articles, Chris Vickery, a security researcher, working together with Steve Ragan, a journalist for CSO Online, revealed details of "a massive, illegal spam operation," supposedly operated by RiverCity Media (RCM).
Vickery claimed he obtained access to a database of over 1.4 billion email accounts, including personal user information, stored on a Rsync backup server that was left exposed online without a password.
Based on their analysis of the data they discovered, the two concluded that RCM was one the biggest spam operators online today, and provided a copy of their database to Spamhaus, a global operator of email spam blacklists.
River City Media denies accusations, files lawsuit
Following their exposés, published on March 6, RCM denied all accusations in a press release four days later, on March 10.
In a lawsuit filed March 21, RCM paints a totally different picture from the story put forward by Vickery
and Ragan.
According to RCM's side of events, Vickery didn't find the Rsync backups on the Internet, but "perpetrated a coordinated, months-long cyberattack against River City and its principals."
River City Media makes some wild accusations
.....
At the center of this lawsuits are two articles, one published on CSO Online, entitled "Spammers expose their entire operation through bad backups" and on the MacKeeper blog, entitled "Spammergate: The Fall of an Empire."
In these two articles, Chris Vickery, a security researcher, working together with Steve Ragan, a journalist for CSO Online, revealed details of "a massive, illegal spam operation," supposedly operated by RiverCity Media (RCM).
Vickery claimed he obtained access to a database of over 1.4 billion email accounts, including personal user information, stored on a Rsync backup server that was left exposed online without a password.
Based on their analysis of the data they discovered, the two concluded that RCM was one the biggest spam operators online today, and provided a copy of their database to Spamhaus, a global operator of email spam blacklists.
River City Media denies accusations, files lawsuit
Following their exposés, published on March 6, RCM denied all accusations in a press release four days later, on March 10.
In a lawsuit filed March 21, RCM paints a totally different picture from the story put forward by Vickery
and Ragan.
According to RCM's side of events, Vickery didn't find the Rsync backups on the Internet, but "perpetrated a coordinated, months-long cyberattack against River City and its principals."
River City Media makes some wild accusations
.....
Last edited by a moderator:
