US court fined son Kuzmin $ 7 million for hacking - ForumDaily
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American court fined son Kuzmin $ 7 million for hacking

The virus has infected at least 40 thousands of computers in the US alone. Photo: depositphotos.com

In the US alone, a virus has infected at least 40 thousands of computers. Photo: depositphotos.com

On Monday, the senior judge of the Manhattan federal court, Kimba Wood, sentenced Russian Nikita Kuzmin to an 37 month prison sentence, which he had already served.

28-year-old son of Russian singer Vladimir Kuzmin was arrested during a rash visit to the US in November 2010 and immediately agreed to cooperate with the investigation.

In May of the following year, he officially pleaded guilty and has since waited for the verdict, because his accomplices were abroad, and the head of the conspiracy is usually sentenced last.

Together with him on the grand case of cybercrime, Latvian Dennis Chalovskis, nicknamed Miami, and Romanian Mihai Jonut Paunescu (nicknamed Virus) were involved.

All three were accused of conspiring to commit fraud and hacking into other people's computers into which the malicious Gosi Trojan was launched, characterized by the prosecutor's office as "one of the most destructive computer viruses in history."

“Gozi”, by the way, is written in the original Gozi, but on most Russian sites it was dubbed Gozy.

According to the allegations, a total of more than a million computers were infected with a virus in a number of countries, including 40 thousands in the USA, including NASA's 190 machines.

Gozi, which was invulnerable to most antivirus programs, secretly downloaded private data from computers of individuals and companies, such as bank account numbers and the names and passwords of their owners. This allowed fraudsters to steal money from other people's accounts and transfer it to theirs.

According to approximate calculations of the prosecutor's office, the total damage suffered by the victims reaches tens of millions of dollars. In connection with this amount of damage, the accused were threatened with huge prison sentences. Muscovite Kuzmin, for example, is up to 97,2 years in prison, Riga's Chalovskis is up to 67 years, and Buharest resident Paunescu is up to 60.

The fact that Kuzmin ultimately received nothing at all shows how smart a decision can be in America - to split at the right time.

In exchange for a reduced term, he agreed to frankly tell the FBI investigators about what he had done and testify against his accomplices, who at that moment were free. Not without reason, almost half of the documents from his criminal case in the judicial database is classified.

It is reported that it was thanks to the testimony of Kuzmin in Latvia that Chalovskis was arrested, and Paunescu was detained in Romania.

The prosecutor's office calls the Muscovite the soul of the scam that ensued in 2005, when Kuzmin decided to create a virus that would steal data from other people's computers, being invisible for the anti-virus programs installed in them.

He compiled the virus specifications and hired an experienced programmer who appeared in the court documents as CC-2 (co-conspirator-2, accomplice No. 2). As can be understood from court documents, it was Chalovskis, who worked for several months and wrote the source code, and Kuzmin began to hand over the virus to hire cybercriminals for a weekly fee.

From his e-mail it follows that the fee was 2 thousands of dollars and included hosting and technical support. Kuzmin provided these services under the brand name «76 Service».

From the very beginning, he abandoned the idea of ​​emptying other people's accounts himself, because he didn’t want to mess around about transferring stolen funds to Russia.

The virus spread, in particular, in innocuous-looking applications in the .pdf format.

Clicking on such an application, the victim let a thievish virus into his computer, which stole his personal data and remained invisible for a long time.

The virus began secretly infiltrating in Europe in 2007, and at the beginning of 2010 migrated to the United States.

In the 2008 year, due to some organizational and technical problems, Kuzmin had to refuse to lease the virus, and he began selling it to cyber fraudsters for 50 thousands of dollars plus a stipulated deduction from the profits.

In March, a virus that had long gone unnoticed by 2010 was finally discovered by an American computer security expert and named his find “Gozi”. In May, the FBI launched an investigation and secured a court order to view a number of Russian-language chats.

There, it collided with Kuzmin, who in one of the dialogues tried to foist on a certain potential client with his virus instead of another well-known Trojan, Zeus.

“Why do you need Zeus, take my Trojan,” he urged. “Mine is much cooler, it doesn’t get scorched by proactive [antivirus programs], and it works with Windows 7 and Vista.”

The prosecutor's office published other excerpts from the chat, in one of which Kuzmin, for example, told his unknown interlocutor that he was driving around Europe in a cabri (cabriolet) BMW 6 model at that moment. He also mentioned his “Audi”.

Shortly before the trip to America, he intended to give his girlfriend a gift by organizing her shooting for the Russian edition of Playboy.

November 19 The FBI learned 2010 from the chat that Kuzmin was going to Thailand. By that time, it had already linked it to the Gozi virus, having found its address in the chat. [email protected], and then his photos on the corresponding site. The visit of the investigators to Odnoklassniki also helped.

22 November Kuzmin clarified that he was going to Bangkok. This time, the Americans did not need to ask the Thai police for legal assistance, as in the case of Viktor Bout, because the object flew from Bangkok to San Francisco, where he was “swept up”.

Chalovskis, in particular, assisted attacks on banking sites by placing questions on them that allowed them to extract confidential information from their unsuspecting clients: date of birth, mother's maiden name or number in the social security system.

It was Chalovskis, according to prosecutors, who developed “web injections”, which made it possible to purposefully withdraw information from specific banks.

5 January with. He was sentenced to a term already served that was 21 a month.

Paunescu is charged with providing the fraudsters with infrastructure in the form of IP numbers and servers for introducing malicious viruses, including Gozi and the Zeus and SpaiA Trojan horses. The US is still bothering about his extradition.

Extradition is delayed, and Kuzmina decided to sentence Paunescu, although, in theory, the Muscovite was supposed to close the line.

In addition to the already served time, Kuzmin was ordered to pay 6 934 979 dollars to the US authorities. If he had money hidden somewhere, he probably honestly admitted it.

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