Bredolab: Jail for man who masterminded botnet of 30 million computers

A man who was in command of a botnet of some 30 million computers worldwide has been sentenced to four years jail in Armenia.

According to prosecutors, Georg Avanesov was earning 100,000 Euros (£80,000 or $125,000) a month from his Bredolab botnet business, renting out access to the compromised computers to criminals who wanted to send out spam, and spread malware and fake anti-virus attacks.

The criminal income allowed the hacker to live a pretty lavish lifestyle by all reports, as he jetted off to the Seychelles with his attractive girlfriend and fancied himself as a DJ.

At its peak, it is estimated that Avanesov’s botnet was spewing out over 3 billion infected emails every day.

Avanesov’s comeuppance began in October 2010, when Dutch police announced that they had wrestled control of 143 Bredolab botnet command & control servers, and were using it to display a warning to infected…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity 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 analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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