Russia’s Spam Kingpin Exposed

The United States Justice Department has declared a wide initiative for halting and dismantling certain botnet that contained numerous compromised PCs joined into a network which a cyber-crime gang controlled.

The Department released one civil complaint on April 10 stating that a computer programmer from Russia who was arrested in Barcelona recently was a spam king. The complaint, related to the Department-of-Justice's idea of dismantling the network-of-bots, charges Pyotr Levashov with spending the past 7-yrs like a botnet king in Russia. Thedailybeast.com posted this, April 11, 2017.

According to officials in USA, Levashov the Russian national was responsible for running the Kelihos botnet that helped him seize personal data as well as give the botnet on hire to others for distributing junk e-mails in bulks while force computer users to pay him ransoms.

And after US requested the arrest of Levashov he got detained at an airport in Barcelona, April 7. Thereafter on the 10th, one judge in Spain ordered for taking Levashov under custody till his extradition is done to USA, the country having 40 days for providing clues in connection with his crime.

Levashov's detention along with the complicated and refined attack that seized his botnet depicts yet one more accomplishment for USA's government in its growing battle vis-à-vis Russia's hostility in cyber-space. The development happens merely weeks after one other DOJ's indictment accused both an intelligence officer and criminals of Russia of conniving towards compromising user database on Yahoo.

Among the things Kelihos did were disseminating malware, tapping into secret information as also dispatching spam mails, while promoting stocks by pulling up their values artificially and advertising counterfeit drugs.

According to Spamhaus Project a non-profit spam-tracking institute, Levashov is an extremely notorious spammer on the Web. Also, he has been a longest operating spammer. Among the ten most prolific spammers globally, Levashov ranks No.7.

The moves which US officials made for terminating Kelihos include acquiring warrants which let them gain over the zombie PCs through change of the malware for intercepting its activities. Consequently, the botnet's traffic would get channeled towards "sinkhole" servers, and with passage of time Kelihos' traffic would get eliminated.

» SPAMfighter News - 4/17/2017