Recently, a U.S. judge has sentenced a Russian national to eight years in prison for stealing all personal and financial data through a botnet conspiracy that intended to make a predicted $100 million.
The Russian hacker Aleksandr Brovko was imprisoned in the Czech Republic in 2019 and surrendered to America, making a lengthy inquiry into Russian hacking rings. The U.S. government claimed that the hacker is a member of elite online forums created for Russian-speaking cybercriminals to accumulate and transfer tools and services for all kinds of crime.
Aleksandr Brovko pleaded guilty in February to plot the whole crime and to commit bank and wire fraud. According to court documents, Brovko was an activist member of several elites, online forums invented for Russian-speaking cybercriminals to collect and exchange their criminal tools and services, as we said above.
$100 Million Botnet Conspiracy
According to the Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian C. Rabbitt of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, Brovko engaged in a scheme to obtain access to Americans’ personal and financial information.
The main motive of Brovko was to steal all the personal credentials, and he made more than $100 million in the planned loss.
According to DOJ reports, the U.S government stated that Brovko’s role was to address software scripts to go within botnet logs and transfer data explorations to pluck highly sensitive personal information and online banking credentials. Not only this, but he also scouts out the value of negotiated accounts to conclude whether they’d be deserving to get used for conducting fraud.
However, every prosecutor responded that Brovko controlled and trafficked more than 200,000 “unauthorized access devices,” a term for credit cards, mobile license numbers, and other things that can be utilized to transfer funds.
The Botnets, or networks of affected computers, proceed to show new additions and changes, increased scope, and improved targets. However, in October, a new modification of the InterPlanetary Storm botnet was created, which comes with further detection-evasion methods and now targets Mac and Android devices.
In August, the cybersecurity researchers warned of a peer-to-peer (P2) botnet termed FritzFrog, and it has been actively breaching SSH servers since January.
The U.S. Attorney for Eastern Virginia Zachary Terwilliger affirmed in one of their reports that “Aleksandr Brovko utilized his programming skills to promote the large-scale theft and usage of stolen personal and financial information.”
All these fraud results in over $100 million in the intended loss; And Virginia Zachary Terwilliger also affirmed that their office is confined for holding these criminals accountable and defending the communities as nowadays cybercrimes are growing at an increasing pace.
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