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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