America Blames Russian Hacker Over Alleged Theft of $100m

US officials recently blamed one Russian hacker for carrying out an attack on numerous PCs globally with malware so he and other accomplices could steal over USD 100m (60 pounds), published news.sky.com in news on June 2, 2014.

Thirty year old Evgeniy Bogachev, not arrested, allegedly played the role of ringleader channeling one crime group comprising members from UK, Ukraine and Russia that launched the attack. Bogachev also called himself "slavik" and "lucky12345" over the Net.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which conducted an investigation for 2-yrs and 6-months, revealed the true identity of Bogachev who along with creating and running Botnet GameoverZeus as well as a malware network, developed the first variant of Trojan Zeus that emerged during 2007 when the hacker's age was just 24.

Three years later during 2010, it became known that this Zeus developer no longer handled the Trojan but that he gave away its source code to one competitor who created SpyEye. The latter subsequently combined both codes.

But Bogachev didn't really stop his malicious activities. He now developed one fresh malware having one P2P CnC (command-and-control) structure that was decentralized (i.e. without a single point of monitoring) and highly sophisticated which made the botnet's dismantling harder.

He even altered his business strategy i.e. he wouldn't sell his new malware the Gameover rather stringently controlled its application by others.

Moreover, when the offenders were highlighted via one civil complaint, the victims' entities appeared to be one Indian tribe from America, without its name specified, within Washington; a company which operated living centers receiving assistance and situated inside Pennsylvania along with an insurance firm; one Massachusetts located area police department; a North Carolina based pest control firm; two enterprises in Florida (one regional bank and a restaurant).

Already, Bogachev faces a 14-count charge linked to his apparent act of being the GameoverZeus's operator. He is also condemned of conspiring, hacking into PCs, and carrying out money laundering, bank fraud and wire fraud. Earlier, he even faced accusation of exercising bank fraud within Omaha (Nebraska, USA) when he used one different Zeus sample called 'Jabber Zeus.'

» SPAMfighter News - 6/13/2014