Russian Police Arrest Igor A. Artimovich, Renowned Spammer

Russian police has detained an erstwhile Sun Microsystems employee then in Russia who spammed globally and was recognized widely, published itwire.com dated September 3, 2013.

The spammer named Igor A. Artimovich used the nickname Engel when he interacted on Russian chat rooms. The man remained in hiding until this summer whilst one Moscow court found his connection with three more spammers who operated a highly prolific spambot that comprised unlawful computer networks been infected with virus and used for distributing e-mail junk.

The court identified one grey worldwide network of contaminated PCs carrying the name Festi outside Russia while within the country it was called Topol-Mailer likening to the name Topol-M of one ballistic missile meant for continent to continent attacks. The network was so strong that sometimes it spewed a maximum of 33% of the total junk messages doing the rounds across global cyber-space.

Prosecutors state that a principal programmer, Artimovich along with one more regulated the contaminated spam network while the original team included an erstwhile officer of signals intelligence of the KGB's successor agency Federal Security Service.

Internauts who received the bulk unsolicited e-mails, which the spammers dispatched, found web-links inside them that led onto 'Canadian Pharmacy' sites although it was understood that businesses based in Russia would actually open on the screen and potentially process Internet-based transaction fees from Visa via Iceland and Azerbaijan situated banks.

Further, according to court's proceedings, zombie machines were utilized for dispatching spam that the PC owners were unaware of and which usually happened in countries, particularly Brazil and India, where end-users hardly used any anti-virus software.

It is computed that Russian spam yields $60m in yearly income, while despite authorities that have managed in stopping specific persons, specialists state that fresh spammers maybe already operative prior to the arrests getting done.

Meanwhile, law enforcement in a similar prominent apprehension of botnet operators, during recent years, arrested Oleg Nikolaenko, also a Russian person, in 2010, when United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation found him operating Botnet Mega-D to spew spam which made him gain a whopping $465K over a 6-month time-span.

» SPAMfighter News - 9/11/2013