How a Citadel Trojan Developer Got Busted
Summary: A U.S. District Court judge in Atlanta sentenced Mark Vartanyan, a Russian hacker who helped develop and sell the Citadel banking trojan, to five years in federal prison on July 19, 2017, after he pleaded guilty in March 2017 to one count of computer fraud. Prosecutors say Citadel infected more than 11 million computers worldwide and caused at least a half billion dollars in losses, and the FBI identified Vartanyan by posing as Citadel customers, uploading a screenshot of a claimed vulnerability to Sendspace, and subpoenaing the file-sharing site's logs to tie the download to his IP address.
Why it matters: Citadel's own customer support system - the feature that made the malware sellable - is what gave the FBI the breadcrumbs to its developers, and the case still ended with a five-year sentence against at least a half billion dollars in documented losses.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Malware
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