Pill Gangs Besmirch Legit Script Founder
Summary: Individuals who promote unlicensed Internet pharmacies registered hundreds of porn and bestiality domains using the name, phone number and former business address of John Horton, founder of the pharmacy verification service LegitScript, which has helped shutter more than 10,000 pill mills in the past year. Security researcher Ronald Guilmette found nearly 2,000 sites either registered in Horton's name or with existing porn domains whose WHOIS records were updated with his data, and around the same time KrebsOnSecurity.com came under a sustained denial-of-service attack traced to Russian pill gangs.
Why it matters: Horton tied the campaign to LegitScript's deal with eNom, the world's fifth-largest registrar, which had handled roughly 40 percent of unlicensed pharmacies selling drugs without a prescription - and he says he has since received death threats. The response to shrinking registrar safe havens was to forge a critic's identity across thousands of domains, which shows how cheaply a reputation can be targeted.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Endpoint & Network Security
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