EstDomains, the 49th largest domain name registrar, with more than
270,000 domain names, is accused of being one of the largest sources of
spam with 10,000 of their domain names currently blacklisted by
SURBL.org, which tracks Web site names that are advertised in junk
email reports The Washington Post.
The Washington Post has made a list of those domain names to show my
this list of 10,000 names are blacklisted. They contain almost any term
used in spam that one can think of "with those terms currently
registered at EstDomains and using their name servers."
The report in The Washington Post follows a number of the Internet's
largest data carriers ceasing to provide "online connectivity to Atrivo
(a.k.a. "Intercage"), an ISP that security experts say is home to a
huge number of scammers and spammers." EstDomains Inc. is "Atrivo's
most important customer and the single biggest reason so many experts
have condemned Atrivo."
The article digs deep into the connections between EXTendedhost,
EstDomains, Bakler Rove Digital and Directi, the latter denying any
participation in the scams. It notes Spamhaus.org who say "EstDomains
is a pioneer in setting up domains and domain name servers to
accommodate a practice known as 'snowshoe spamming'."
The second article in The Washington Post looks again at EstDomains
Inc., the company's history, the legacy of its current chief executive,
and its future prospects. The article notes EstDomains chief executive
is 27-year-old Vladimir Tsastsin, who is also the head of Rove Digital,
a company that appears to encompass a domain auction service named
Bakler.com, and a recently launched Web traffic-shaping service called
Zmot. "Tsastsin has a rather colorful past, and is no stranger to
organized crime. According to the local court and news media, he was
recently sentenced to three years in an Estonian prison after being
found guilty of credit card fraud, document forgery, and money
laundering."
On Tsastsin's past, the Washington Post spoke to "Hillar Aarelaid, team
director of the Estonian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT
Estonia). Aarelaid maintains that Tsastsin long ago ceded control of
EstDomains to organized cyber criminals in Russia."
These two detailed investigations in the Washington Post are available from:
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