Agobot malware case redux

Way back in 2004, Sophos reported on the arrest of a German man accused of creating the Agobot Trojan horse, that turned PCs into a botnet of compromised computers for the purposes of distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks.

Axel Gembe was originally apprehended by the German authorities in the southern town of Waldshut on 7 May 2004, and put behind bars as the authorities feared he might be planning to leave the country to avoid military service.

Gembe, now 25, and Lee Graham Walker, a 24-year-old Brit, were indicted on Thursday by a grand jury in Los Angeles, California, on counts of conspiracy and intentionally damaging a computer system. If found guilty they could face up to 15 years in prison.

Gembe and Walker are alleged to have been hired by Jay Echouafni, the owner of a…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.