The creator of the Banking Trojan 'Gozi' has admitted his crime and is now awaiting sentencing.
Gozi is a Trojan that has been around for several years now, and was first reported in 2007. It is a real threat to bankers and online banking in general.
In 2013, several people were arrested on charges of using Gozi. Eventually, one of them, Deniss Calovskis, 30, pleaded guilty. Calovskis was held responsible for creating some of the trojan's code, according to an FBI statement released in 2013. It said the Latvian coder, who went by the nickname 'Miami' on the web, was arrested on suspicion of authoring the code in his home country in November 2012.
It is said and confirmed that the codes deceived people in order to make them believe that they were official banking sites. US authorities had been quite alarmed by the gang and the malicious software that supplied the dark economy with «tens of millions of dollars».
The rest of the gang is from Russia, Nikita Kuzmin, and from Romania, Mihai Ionut Paunescu. Reuters reported that the latter admitted his crime, in 2011.
"This long-term investigation uncovered an alleged international cybercrime ring whose systems had infected at least one million computers worldwide and 40,000 in the U.S., and resulted in the theft or loss of tens of millions of dollars," said FBI Assistant Director George Venizelos.
“Banking Trojans are to cybercriminals what lockpicking machines or flashlights are to robbers breaking into a traditional bank, but much more efficient and less detectable. The research will put an end to the Gozi virus.”
