US Announces $3 Million Reward for Gameover Zeus Botnet Suspect

Securityweek.com reported during the last week of February 2015 stating that United States recently announced a reward of $3 million for information to catch a known Russian hacker 'Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev' supposed to be the mastermind of the notorious GameOver Zeus botnet.

US has charged Bogachev for running the peer-to-peer botnet (GameOver Zeus) which is suspected to have stolen over $100m from online bank accounts.

Researchers said that in July 2012, the botnet had infected more than 675,000 systems including of 14 companies among top-20 Fortune 500 companies but the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) now thinks that the botnet had actually infected over 1 million computer systems.

FBI said that the software was used to capture passwords, bank account numbers, personal identification numbers and other necessary information to log into online banking accounts.

He (Bogachev) was charged with conspiracy, wire and bank fraud, computer hacking and other money laundering in link with his suspected role as an administrator of the GameOver botnet in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. FBI revealed that he was also prosecuted in Omaha, Nebraska in 2012 and charged with conspiracy for committing bank fraud related to his alleged involvement in the operation of prior variant of Zeus malware namely Jabber Zeus.

The FBI added that Bogachev knowingly acted as an administrator and others who were involved in the scheme, conspired to spread fishing emails and spam containing links to compromised web sites.

Bogachev has ranked number one on the FBI's 'most wanted list' for fairly some time, followed by Romanian cybercriminal Nicolae Popescu, wanted for posting phony notices, selling high-rated goods on online market; and a reward of 41 million / 880,000Euros has been announced for capturing Nicolae Popescu.

Digitaltrends.com published news during last week of February 2015 quoting Joseph Demarest, Assistant Director of FBI, as saying "We are seeking assistance from the world to locate Bogachev."

Bogachev may be out of reach of the U.S. authorities but they know that if he goes out of the country then there is a chance of catching him because someone might call up due to multi-million dollar reward on him.

» SPAMfighter News - 3/9/2015