US takes down huge botnet as Spain arrests notorious Russian hacker

WASHINGTON: US authorities moved Monday to take down a global computer botnet behind the massive theft of personal data and unwanted spam emails, as Spain arrested the notorious Russian hacker who operated it.

US authorities say the Russian, Piotr or Peter Levashov, had operated the Kelihos network of tens of thousands of infected computers, stealing personal data and renting the network out to others to send spam emails by the millions and extort ransom from computer owners.

Levashov, also known in the hacking world as Peter Severa, was arrested at Barcelona airport on Friday at the US request.

A Spanish judge on Monday ordered him to be remanded in custody as Washington is expected to seek his extradition. The US has 40 days to present evidence.

A US indictment unsealed Monday said Levashov, 36 and a native of St Petersburg, had operated the Kelihos botnet since around 2010.

Two years earlier he was already in the sights of US investigators running another botnet and managing the spam operations of a major US spammer, Alan Ralsky. Ralsky and others were jailed in that case but Levashov was never caught.

The Kelihos network is made up of private computers around the world running on the Microsoft Window operating system. The computers are infected with malware that gives Levashov the ability to control them remotely, with the owners completely unaware.

According to the Justice Department, at times the number of computers in the network has topped 100,000, with between five and 10 percent of them in the United States. Through underground networks, Kelihos sold the network’s services to others, who would use it to send out spam emails advertising counterfeit drugs, work- at-home scams, and other fraud schemes, the indictment said.

They were also used for illegal ‘ pump- and- dump’ stock market manipulation schemes, and to spread other malware through which hackers could steal a user’s banking account information including passwords, and lock up a computer’s information to demand huge ransoms. — AFP