A Russian hacker has been sentenced to eight years in prison for participating in a campaign that caused financial losses of $100 million.
According to the US Department of Justice (DoJ), the 36-year-old Russian defendant named Aleksandr Brovko was an active member of “various elite, online forums designed for Russian-speaking cybercriminals to gather and exchange criminal tools and services.”
The hacker was collaborating with other cybercriminals to steal information via botnets.
Brovko created scripts capable of analyzing log data from botnet sources and then searched these data dumps to discover information (PII) and account credentials.
The credentials recorded by Brovko's code were then checked by him to see if the bank accounts were "worthy" of being stolen.
According to ZDNet, the Russian hacker participated in the botnet campaign from 2007 to 2019. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and was sentenced to eight years in prison by senior US judge TS Ellis III.
According to the indictment, Alexander Tverdokhlebov, who in 2017 received a 9-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to operating botnets that were able to control over half a million computers, also participated in the conspiracy.
“ Aleksandr Brovko used his programming skills to facilitate the large-scale theft and use of stolen personal and financial information, resulting in the loss of $100 million ,” said U.S. Attorney Zachary Terwilliger. “ Our office is committed to finding and punishing these criminals and protecting our communities as cybercrime becomes an increasingly prominent threat .”
Last month, Imperva researchers discovered a botnet targeting sites through their content management system (CMS) platforms. The botnet, dubbed KashmirBlack , began operating in late 2019. It is now capable of attacking thousands of sites on a daily basis, for mining cryptocurrency, spam, and defacement.
