‘Mastermind’ of Mariposa botnet arrested

Last week I blogged about the net closing in on a group of Slovenian hackers believed to be connected to the Mariposa botnet.

Today it is being reported that a 23-year-old Slovenian, known as Iserdo, was arrested in the city of Maribor, Slovenia. The arrest comes after an international investigation involving the FBI and Slovenian and Spanish police.

Iserdo’s real name has not been revealed, but it is understood that he has been released on bail pending further investigations.

Almost 13 million computers in more than 190 countries are believed to have silently recruited into the Mariposa botnet, named after the Spanish word for “butterfly”. The affected computers were comandeered by hackers after they…

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.