FBI Identifies Russian ‘Mega-D’ Spam Kingpin
Summary: Federal investigators indicted 23-year-old Moscow resident Oleg Nikolaenko as the operator of the Mega-D botnet, a network of spam-spewing PCs that once accounted for roughly a third of all spam sent worldwide. Investigators tied him to the operation through an ePassporte account registered in his name and Mega-D malware samples found in a Gmail inbox, and he was arrested in Las Vegas and ordered held without bond in Milwaukee on CAN-SPAM charges.
Why it matters: Mega-D was a botnet of at least 120,000 infected computers that recovered to nearly 17 percent of worldwide spam within weeks of a FireEye takedown, and the same operator was a top-earning Spamit.com affiliate making nearly $81,000 in five months - a reminder that disruption without arrest buys little time.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
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- Cybercrime & Law Enforcement
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