Alleged Spam King Pyotr Levashov Arrested
Summary: Spanish police arrested Russian programmer Pyotr Levashov in Barcelona on an international warrant while he was vacationing with his family. Levashov, known online as "Severa," is listed at #7 on Spamhaus's Top 10 Worst Spammers list and is alleged to have run the Waledac botnet, which infected between 70,000 and 90,000 computers and could send roughly 1.5 billion spam messages a day.
What you should know: Leaked SpamIt records tied Severa to $438,000 in revenue and $145,000 in commissions from rogue pharmacy spam over three years, and he rented botnets at $200 per million messages - a reminder that spam infrastructure is a business with customers, pricing, and affiliates, not just noise in an inbox.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Data Breaches
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