The Egyptian government cut off the country’s Internet access last week, but not before online spammers hijacked thousands of Internet addresses assigned to President Hosni Mubarak’s wife.
Spamhaus.org reports that spammers recently commandeered more than 5,000 Internet Protocol (IP) addresses that were assigned years ago to Suzanne Mubarak and the Suzanne Mubarak Science Exploration Center.
Spamhaus blamed notorious American spammer Michael Lindsay and his California-based company, iMedia Networks, with taking control of the IP addresses and sending hordes of junk e-mails from them.
The Egyptian Internet blackout should have no effect on the purloined IP addresses, which presumably now point to other countries.
In other Egypt-related news, the last Egyptian Internet service provider standing, Noor, finally was taken down early Tuesday morning (Feb. 1) local time.