US disrupts major hacking, extortion ring; Russian charged
Computer malware affecting up to a million PCs disrupted by international initiative led by US authorities with Russian accused of orchestrating the scam named and charged
A US-led international operation disrupted a crime ring that infected hundreds of thousands of personal computers around the globe with malicious software used for stealing banking credentials and extorting computer owners, the Justice Department said in Washington on Monday.
Authorities in nearly a dozen countries worked with private security companies to wrest control of the network of infected machines, known by the name of its master software, Gameover Zeus.
Court documents released on Monday said that between 500,000 and 1 million machines worldwide were infected with the malicious software, which was derived from the original “Zeus” trojan for stealing financial passwords that emerged in 2006.
“These schemes were highly sophisticated and immensely lucrative.”
In addition to stealing from the online accounts of businesses and consumers, the Gameover Zeus crew installed other malicious programs, including one called Cryptolocker that encrypted files and demanded payments for their release. Cryptolocker alone infected more than 234,000 machines and won US$27 million in ransom payments, the Justice Department said.
The two programs together brought the gang more than US$100 million, prosecutors said in court documents, including US$198,000 in an unauthorised wire transfer from an unnamed Pennsylvania materials company and US$750 in ransom from a police department in Massachusetts that had its investigative files encrypted. Other victims included PNC Bank, Capital One Bank and others, according to court documents.
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