Chats With Accused ‘Mega-D’ Botnet Owner?
Summary: Leaked chat records described by Krebs on Security appear to show Oleg Nikolaenko, a 24-year-old Russian awaiting trial in Wisconsin on charges of running the Mega-D botnet, negotiating spam commissions with SpamIt co-administrator Dmitry Stupin in 2007. The Justice Department alleges Mega-D infected more than half a million PCs, could send over 10 billion spam messages a day, and was responsible for 30 to 40 percent of the world's junk email, with Nikolaenko earning hundreds of thousands of dollars under the nickname Docent.
What's compelling: The SpamIt records show Docent earning more than $325,000 in commissions between 2007 and 2010, paid to the same ePassporte account the FBI tied to Nikolaenko - a paper trail that turned a botnet operator's chat logs into evidence.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
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