Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer for security vendor F-Secure, has gone all Smoking Gun on a trio of Russian DDoS extortionists who are looking at eight years apiece in the slammer for victimizing companies in the U.S. and U.K.
Filing to his blog from the eCrime conference in London, Hypponen writes of having encountered Anton Aleksandrovich Pakhomov, a Russian prosecutor, at the event:
Mr. Pakhamov worked as a prosecutor on a case against denial-of-service extortionists. The case involved a large botnet that was used to attack webshops and gambling operators in UK and in USA. Targeted companies were forced to pay a ransom to get their sites back online. The ring earned several million dollars before they were caught.
The case involved 10 persons in Latvia (money mules) and four attackers from Russia and two from Kazakhstan. Out of these, three persons were successfully located and prosecuted in the city of Balakov in Russia. The whole investigation took more than a year, but in the end the three individuals were all sentenced. They got eight years of prison each.
The headline on the blog item reads: “So, what does the enemy look like in real life?” And, just as they might on The Smoking Gun, Hypponen provides a picture of the three.
So who were they? They were, from left to right, Alexander Petrov, Denis Stepanov and Ivan Maksakov.
DDoS extortion has been a topic of interest for Buzz before, such as here where I argue that victims have a responsibility to resist – and perhaps it should even become a legal one; this column where readers have their say on the topic; and, this one where a couple of experts tell me why I was wrong.
Goes without saying that the perpetrators belong behind bars and nice to see that it actually happens.
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