Three Hackers Jailed in Russia: 8 Years Each

["Fergie" <fergdawg () netzero net>]

Via viruslist.com (Kaspersky).

[snip]

A court in the Saratov region of Russia has sentenced three
cybercriminals to eight years in jail each for a spree of extortion
attacks in 2003. The three hackers managed to steal up to $4 million
from UK companies by means of blackmail. All three men pleaded guilty
and faced up to fifteen years jail time for extortion and the use of
malicious computer programs.

The criminal group consisted of a number of individuals from several
Russian cities, including Saratov, St. Petersburg, Astrakhan and
Pyatigorsk. In 2003 they decided to carry out attacks on websites of
online bookmakers in the UK and demand a ransom. One prominent attack
took place on the website of Canbet, a British-Australian betting
venture. The gang carried out a distributed denial of service attack on
Canbet’s website during an important sporting event, demanding a
payment of $10,000. When Canbet refused to pay up, their site was
blocked and the company lost up to $200,000 in business for each day
the server was down.

After that Canbet decided to pay the ransom into a Latvian bank, but
the attacks did not stop, so the company contacted the British National
High-Tech Crime Unit. British officers then turned to their Russian
colleagues, who carried out their own investigation and arrested two
suspects in 2004, with two supposed masterminds of the gang still on
the run. In 2005 a third man was arrested and the three men held faced
charges in court. It is thought they managed to extort as much as $4
million from their victims, having carried out 54 attacks in 30
countries over six months. Now the three men, including 20-year old
Ivan Maksakov from Saratov, who created the spyware module used in the
attacks, will have to spend eight years in jail each following a joint
effort by British and Russian agencies as well as Interpol.

[snip]

Link:
http://www.viruslist.com/en/news?id=200599189

- ferg


--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg(at)netzero.net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/


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