Romanian duo indicted over developing and distributing malware, contaminating 400K PCs

An Ohio federal jury convicted Radu Miclaus, aged 37, and Bogdan Nicolescu, aged 36, for allegedly creating malicious software and distributing it to infect over 400,000 PCs inside USA so they could mine crypto-currency as well as capture the victims' data for its sale on illegal online forums. The malicious software picked up personal information, financial data, credentials and more.

The DOJ i.e. Department of Justice issued one press release according to which, Miclaus and Nicolescu underwent a trial spanning 12 days following which they were convicted. The trial was about the duo conniving towards carrying out wire fraud, conniving towards committing aggravated ID-theft, conniving towards trafficking inwards fake service marks, conniving towards carrying out money laundering, along with performing wire fraud in twelve instances. The accused are to hear sentencing on 14th August, 2019 when they would appear in front of Patricia A. Gaughan Chief Judge at Ohio's Northern District.

Moreover Miclaus and Nicolescu allegedly started designing their malware and distributing it during 2007. The duo managed replicating electronic mail contacts from victims' PCs with the aid of their ware after which they dispatched malware-laced e-mails to those contacts too. The malicious software triggered files to work, compelling the infected devices for signing up AOL accounts which the pair used for dispatching more malware-laced electronic mails to ever-newer victims.

The DOJ also elaborated that when the users of the contaminated PCs visited eBay, PayPal, Facebook like websites, the indicted twosome interfered to capture the requests while diverted the PCs onto an almost same site they crafted. This was for the two to seize account credentials such as of credit cards that they used in paying for illicit infrastructures, notably signing up domain names in the name of fictitious identities, hiring in server space, and buying Virtual Private Networks that hid their identities still further. Threatpost.com posted this, April 12, 2019.

In general, Miclaus and Nicolescu posted a thousand-and-more fake listings for premium-priced goods like motorcycles and automobiles on auction sites such as eBay. They infected the said goods' photos with malware that diverted the PCs which viewed the pictures onto fake web-pages.

» SPAMfighter News - 4/19/2019