Bredolab Botmaster ‘Birdie’ Still at Large
Summary: Employee and financial records leaked from SpamIt, a pharmacy affiliate program breached in 2010, provided new clues about a previously unknown Russian botmaster nicknamed "Birdie" who was believed to have been closely tied to developing and maintaining Bredolab, the botnet dismantled in an international law enforcement sweep in late 2010. Armenian authorities arrested 27-year-old Georg Avanesov in October 2010 on suspicion of running Bredolab, which infected an estimated 3 million PCs per month, but Dutch and Armenian investigators were never able to fully identify Birdie, whose Birdie Load System processed at least 50,000 new malware loads for customers each day.
Key Takeaway: Bredolab was commonly used to deploy new installations of the ZeuS Trojan, which has been used in countless online banking heists against consumers and businesses - and the operator who built the load system that fed it was never identified, with strong indications he had rebuilt a massive loads system and was again selling it on the underground.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Cybercrime & Law Enforcement
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