Financial Mogul Linked to DDoS Attacks
Summary: Russian investigators arrested St. Petersburg resident Igor Artimovich, known as "Engel," who confessed to using a botnet of more than 10,000 infected PCs to DDoS Assist, the payment processor for Aeroflot, after being hired and paid by ChronoPay co-founder Pavel Vrublevsky. Leaked documents show a WebMoney transfer of more than $9,000 from an account Vrublevsky controlled to Artimovich's purse on July 6, 2010, days before the attacks began, and Vrublevsky has reportedly fled Russia, with sources placing him in the Maldives.
What you should know: Aeroflot ultimately awarded its payment contract to neither ChronoPay nor Assist but to Alfa-Bank, citing the processing downtime - a reminder that a hired botnet can decide a competitive contract worth more than the attacker's $9,000 payment.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Endpoint & Network Security
- Related
- Adapting to AI penetration testing orchestrators: The Modern Security Model Cyber Risks · Nov 13, 2026Introducing Spend Management: Spending limits and alerts for Cloudflare Cyber Risks · Nov 13, 2026Choosing Que Paxa, an unusual consensus algorithm Cyber Risks · Nov 11, 2026