Nikita Kuzmin, a 28-year-old Russian, the developer of the Gozi Trojan, was sentenced yesterday to 37 months in prison. In addition to the prison sentence, the court also imposed a fine of $6,934,979 for the damages he caused by developing the Gozi banking malware.
Kuzmin created the Gozi Trojan in 2007 and distributed it on underground hacking forums using the alias “76.” The malware was innovative when it was created, as it was the first to offer MaaS (malware-as-a-service).
The Gozi banking trojan makes “Web injects” into modules that exploit various processes in the browser of infected computers. This way it could overlay legitimate pages with fake ones, and of course it preferred banking portals.
Authorities arrested Kuzmin in the US in 2010. The hacker reached a plea deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty later in 2011.
In addition to Kuzmin, US authorities also charge two others as his associates.
One of them is Deniss Calovskis, a Latvian hacker who created many of Gozi's modules. Authorities arrested Calovskis in November 2012, after a long and drawn-out extradition process.
The second suspect who helped Kuzmin is Romanian, Mihai Ionut Paunescu, who was arrested in 2012 in Romania.
