Gozi Creator Sent Behind Bars, Ordered for Submitting Hefty Fine

A hacker from Russia and creator as well as seller of the Gozi malicious program faces sentence after his ware infected more than 1m PCs and reaped him several million USD through criminal proceeds.

Prosecutors in U.S said that Nikita Kuzmin who was charged with developing financial malware that he named Gozi was given punishment in a New York court's sentencing. During the malware's existence, it contaminated no less than 1m computers as well as caused tremendous amounts of dollars to be lost.

The Russian national aged 28 admitted to committing fraud along with computer intrusion during 2011, and presently faced a sentence of prison term to be served over 37 months in aggregate, revealed United States law enforcement.

Also according to the statement, Kuzmin didn't just develop Gozi, however thought out innovative ways too for disseminating it and raking huge profits out of it.

Different from numerous cyber-criminals contemporary to Kuzmin, who earned high revenues from malicious software merely through utilizing them for grabbing cash, Kuzmin made Gozi available on hire to other crooks, setting a role model of online criminals who could provide service as well to other criminals.

And though Kuzmin willingly cooperated with investigating officials during their probe of fellow conspirators and so didn't get any extra prison term, he nonetheless has to pay restitution along with forfeiture amounting to $6,934,979, reports Bloomberg.

Unfortunately, Gozi's threat remains. Pymnts.com posted this, May 4, 2016.

Law enforcement indicates that a CnC (command and control) server was eventually spotted for Gozi that carried approximately 10K account details of 5,200 victims. The details contained, amongst others, account credentials belonging to people at more than 300 organizations, particularly prominent financial service companies and banks across the world.

Gozi could be hired for $500/week while adaptable to tailored web-injections so as for spreading beyond electronic mail while targeting particular banks. Subsequently, it'd garner data and dispatch the same onto the CnC system, wherein the malware's hirer could access any of the stolen data.

Gozi's victims exist globally such as inside Germany, U.K, USA, Italy and France. An extremely high-profile target of the malware was NASA.

» SPAMfighter News - 5/11/2016