JIM EDWARDS
FBI
Evgeniy Mikhailovitch Bogachev, the hacker known as “Slavik,” is still at large. And rich.
The U.S. Department of Justice began dismantling the Cryptolocker and Gameover Zeus botnets this week, freeing up to 1 million computers from malware controlled by legendary Russian hacker “Slavik,” real name Evgeniy Mikhailovitch Bogachev.
You can read the DOJ’s press release here. Bogachev has been charged in a 14-count indictment with conspiracy, computer hacking, wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering.
USA Today has an enlightening story on the scale of Slavik’s operations: His botnets took up to $100 million from their victims. Cryptolocker, for instance, would lock down users’ files and render them inaccessible unless the owner paid a ransom fee. Gameover Zeus tempted users to click on an email link. That link would then surreptitiously install a keylogger on the machine, which Slavik would allegedly use to figure out your bank account numbers and passwords. In one operation, Slavik launched a denial-of-service attack (a massive number of fake traffic requests from his botnet) at PNC Bank. While PNC was scrambling to defend its websites from the attack, Slavik removed $198,000 from a single account, belonging to a plastics company in Pennsylvania.
The most frustrating part of all is that Slavik remains free, USA Today reports:
Bogachev, 30, who lives luxuriously in Anapa, Russia, a beautiful seaside resort town of 60,000 on the northern coast of the Black Sea, and often sails his yacht to various Black Sea ports, remains a fugitive.
Here’s the FBI’s wanted poster for him:
