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Russian Media Hails Spammer's Murder
By Anton Nossik
Created: 26.07.2005 12:43 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 13:13 MSK
MosNews.Com
Russia's most (in)famous spammer, Vardan Kushnir, 35, was dead in his
apartment in downtown Moscow on Monday, July 25. Someone repeatedly
smashed his head with a heavy object, authorities say, and then
ransacked his entire apartment. The authorities have obviously got
no clue as to who that someone might have been.
And, as a matter of fact, they don't seem to really care: every day
between 10 and 20 people meet a violent death in Russia's capital,
and a significant part of those crimes remains unsolved (Russia's
Interior Ministry reports 1,935 unsolved murders, 73,000 burglaries
and 11,400 robberies between January and May in this year alone). There
is no reason for Moscow's law enforcement officials to give Kushnir's
case any special treatment, so they most probably won't. But the
Moscow-based media is awash with comments and speculations, expounding
one simple, albeit largely irrational, theory: someone (ranging from
God almighty to an irate IT office worker) finally punished Vardan
Kushnir for his seemingly unstoppable spamming activities.
Indeed, the deceased must have been the most hated person among
17.6 million Internet users in Russia, whom he continuously spammed
over the last few years, sending out tons of email ads for his
language courses. These feelings are shared by many among the 20
million Russian-speaking Internet users outside the country, whom he
also plagued with unsolicited ads, both text and graphical: despite
limiting its offers to Muscovites only, the American Language Center
did send mail to locations as remote as California, Canada or the
office network of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, in Israel.
Russian-language media, both online and offline, has made little effort
to conceal one central thought when dealing with the spammer's demise:
that somehow the late Mr. Kushnir got what he deserved. "The Spammer
Had it Coming", one headline reads. "Spam is Deadly", "Ignoble Death
Becomes Russia's Top Spammer", "An Ultimate Solution to the Spam
Problem" - 84 Russian-language news captions on Kushnir's murder,
retrieved by the Yandex News search engine within a day of the event,
seem to share the general feeling.
This jubilation is largely due to the fact that spamming is as good
as legal in Russia. Not only because of local lawmakers' general
ignorance in IT issues, but also due to the executive branches'
reluctance to act upon laws already in effect. Specific antispam
legislation hasn't been enacted in Russia yet, but there are at least
three articles in Russia's Criminal Code dealing with computer crime
" database tampering, unauthorized access to protected systems and
networks, creation and dissemination of harmful software " which
could be used in specific cases to deal with particular spam attacks,
to track, charge and indict at least those who send out viruses,
hack corporate mailservers or use stolen proprietary email databases
for spamming purposes.
Likewise, there are laws in Russia, regulating the dissemination
and content of ads, and local spammers have never bothered to
comply. Unfortunately, none of these laws has ever been enforced
on spammers. Law enforcement officers happen to be the most typical
representatives of Russian bureaucracy: unless they're economically
motivated by the plaintiff, or act on orders from the very top,
they will use any pretext imaginable to avoid doing their duty. And
in the case of spammers they are very successful in doing nothing.
In the particular case of Vardan Kushnir, the Internet community
spared no effort to discrupt his activities, engaging help from all
sorts of authorities. Kushnir's personal data was posted webwide; the
deputy minister of communications (himself the target of unsolicited
language-learning ads) recorded a message, urging American Language
Center to stop spamming, and Rambler, one of Russia's biggest Internet
holdings, set up a calling system in its office, that played the
message non-stop to the ALC call-center operators and answering
machines. Finally, a Moscow-based Internet lawyer Anton Sergo filed a
formal complaint against Vardan Kushnir with the Antitrust Authority
(in charge of the enforcement of ad laws). Kushnir failed to show up
at any hearings, and administrative proceedings were started against
him for non-compliance. Then the spammer promptly changed his mind and
came to an antitrust hearing, claiming he had absolutely no idea who
might be sending out all those innumerable ads for his business. The
case was closed.
Given all this sad experience, and the constant increase in the
number of unsolicited emails clogging Russia's network traffic, one
can easily imagine the feelings of a typical Russian Internet user,
witnessing his very own and personal Inbox steadily reduced to another
edition of a Trash folder. Joining the spamming industry in Russia
is dirt cheap: any business can afford to mailbomb a million users
for $100, and any individual can buy a software bundle, complete
with mail address databases, starting from $20, to send out his CV,
advertise his flat for rent, or sell a used car. Little wonder,
that many spam-fighting tools, such as Spamcop, offer its users an
option to ban any mail from the RU domain altogether, and thousands
of Russian SMTP servers (including those of large ISP networks)
occasionally make it to major international relay-blocking lists,
due to spammers' exploits. Which means that any mail originating
from the Russian users of those servers gets trashed automatically,
without notice to either the sender or the recipient.
It's little wonder, then, that Vardan Kushnir became as popular a
character among Russian-speaking Internet users, as Lord Voldemort must
be among Hogwarts' fans. And a tale of some anonymous 'Harry Potter'
paying him a private visit on a warm July morning produces quite
a predictable sensation among the audience. Of course, everybody
understands, that spam will not stop with Kushnir's demise " it
will persist for years to come, exactly the way Lord Voldemort finds
his way back into the picture with every new installment of the Harry
Potter saga. But this time, the magic wand has for once dealt a deadly
blow to the arch-villain, and there seems to be no option left for
the spectators, than to hail the magic.
By Anton Nossik
Created: 26.07.2005 12:43 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 13:13 MSK
MosNews.Com
Russia's most (in)famous spammer, Vardan Kushnir, 35, was dead in his
apartment in downtown Moscow on Monday, July 25. Someone repeatedly
smashed his head with a heavy object, authorities say, and then
ransacked his entire apartment. The authorities have obviously got
no clue as to who that someone might have been.
And, as a matter of fact, they don't seem to really care: every day
between 10 and 20 people meet a violent death in Russia's capital,
and a significant part of those crimes remains unsolved (Russia's
Interior Ministry reports 1,935 unsolved murders, 73,000 burglaries
and 11,400 robberies between January and May in this year alone). There
is no reason for Moscow's law enforcement officials to give Kushnir's
case any special treatment, so they most probably won't. But the
Moscow-based media is awash with comments and speculations, expounding
one simple, albeit largely irrational, theory: someone (ranging from
God almighty to an irate IT office worker) finally punished Vardan
Kushnir for his seemingly unstoppable spamming activities.
Indeed, the deceased must have been the most hated person among
17.6 million Internet users in Russia, whom he continuously spammed
over the last few years, sending out tons of email ads for his
language courses. These feelings are shared by many among the 20
million Russian-speaking Internet users outside the country, whom he
also plagued with unsolicited ads, both text and graphical: despite
limiting its offers to Muscovites only, the American Language Center
did send mail to locations as remote as California, Canada or the
office network of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, in Israel.
Russian-language media, both online and offline, has made little effort
to conceal one central thought when dealing with the spammer's demise:
that somehow the late Mr. Kushnir got what he deserved. "The Spammer
Had it Coming", one headline reads. "Spam is Deadly", "Ignoble Death
Becomes Russia's Top Spammer", "An Ultimate Solution to the Spam
Problem" - 84 Russian-language news captions on Kushnir's murder,
retrieved by the Yandex News search engine within a day of the event,
seem to share the general feeling.
This jubilation is largely due to the fact that spamming is as good
as legal in Russia. Not only because of local lawmakers' general
ignorance in IT issues, but also due to the executive branches'
reluctance to act upon laws already in effect. Specific antispam
legislation hasn't been enacted in Russia yet, but there are at least
three articles in Russia's Criminal Code dealing with computer crime
" database tampering, unauthorized access to protected systems and
networks, creation and dissemination of harmful software " which
could be used in specific cases to deal with particular spam attacks,
to track, charge and indict at least those who send out viruses,
hack corporate mailservers or use stolen proprietary email databases
for spamming purposes.
Likewise, there are laws in Russia, regulating the dissemination
and content of ads, and local spammers have never bothered to
comply. Unfortunately, none of these laws has ever been enforced
on spammers. Law enforcement officers happen to be the most typical
representatives of Russian bureaucracy: unless they're economically
motivated by the plaintiff, or act on orders from the very top,
they will use any pretext imaginable to avoid doing their duty. And
in the case of spammers they are very successful in doing nothing.
In the particular case of Vardan Kushnir, the Internet community
spared no effort to discrupt his activities, engaging help from all
sorts of authorities. Kushnir's personal data was posted webwide; the
deputy minister of communications (himself the target of unsolicited
language-learning ads) recorded a message, urging American Language
Center to stop spamming, and Rambler, one of Russia's biggest Internet
holdings, set up a calling system in its office, that played the
message non-stop to the ALC call-center operators and answering
machines. Finally, a Moscow-based Internet lawyer Anton Sergo filed a
formal complaint against Vardan Kushnir with the Antitrust Authority
(in charge of the enforcement of ad laws). Kushnir failed to show up
at any hearings, and administrative proceedings were started against
him for non-compliance. Then the spammer promptly changed his mind and
came to an antitrust hearing, claiming he had absolutely no idea who
might be sending out all those innumerable ads for his business. The
case was closed.
Given all this sad experience, and the constant increase in the
number of unsolicited emails clogging Russia's network traffic, one
can easily imagine the feelings of a typical Russian Internet user,
witnessing his very own and personal Inbox steadily reduced to another
edition of a Trash folder. Joining the spamming industry in Russia
is dirt cheap: any business can afford to mailbomb a million users
for $100, and any individual can buy a software bundle, complete
with mail address databases, starting from $20, to send out his CV,
advertise his flat for rent, or sell a used car. Little wonder,
that many spam-fighting tools, such as Spamcop, offer its users an
option to ban any mail from the RU domain altogether, and thousands
of Russian SMTP servers (including those of large ISP networks)
occasionally make it to major international relay-blocking lists,
due to spammers' exploits. Which means that any mail originating
from the Russian users of those servers gets trashed automatically,
without notice to either the sender or the recipient.
It's little wonder, then, that Vardan Kushnir became as popular a
character among Russian-speaking Internet users, as Lord Voldemort must
be among Hogwarts' fans. And a tale of some anonymous 'Harry Potter'
paying him a private visit on a warm July morning produces quite
a predictable sensation among the audience. Of course, everybody
understands, that spam will not stop with Kushnir's demise " it
will persist for years to come, exactly the way Lord Voldemort finds
his way back into the picture with every new installment of the Harry
Potter saga. But this time, the magic wand has for once dealt a deadly
blow to the arch-villain, and there seems to be no option left for
the spectators, than to hail the magic.