The security researchers have recently reported that the Russian Business Network (RBN) has gone off the air. The Russian Business Network is known for being a hacker and malware hosting organization, which has operated out of Saint Petersburg, Russia.

According to Trend Micro’s security researchers starting 10 p.m. EST Tuesday, the organization has practically vanished from the Internet, as “the routing information for their IP address has been withdrawn”. Paul Ferguson, one of Trendo Micro’s researchers that study RBN’s activity also said that this move is a significant fact because “while RBN has had connectivity issues in the past, then the routing [to its IP addresses] was still being advertised. This time, they've been voluntarily withdrawn.” And “This is not the result of someone, such as their ISP, blackholing their traffic.”, as Paul Ferguson added.

However, a report from The Washington Post’s web site claims that the Russian Business Network’s upstream connectivity providers have started to refuse routing its traffic as early as mid-October.

Paul Ferguson explained that by relinquishing the control of the IP blocks it had been allocated, the Russian Business Network was simply cutting its ties to the Internet and made it impossible for its thousands of web domains to access the Web and this way to be reached by the users. So, theoretically there are at least two possible explanations: the first one is that the Russian Business Network is simply shifting to new digs; another explanation could be that they are out of the …business. But it would be too strange for such a prolific outlaw organization to quit with no explanation; and that is why Paul Ferguson thinks that “they’re down, no out”, although “No one knows why they’ve done this.”

RBN became very known as the source of many malicious attacks and recently, it was reported to be also behind the email attacks that used malicious PDF file.