Russian authorities don’t take kindly to crooks attacking their own banks, come down hard on Fedotov. Dmitry Fedotov, 29, the Russian national that developed the Blackhole exploit kit was sentenced to seven years in a corrective labor colony, the actual administrative name and replacement of the Gulag labor camp system, Russian news service TASS reports.
Fedotov, who was arrested in October 2013 together with twelve other suspects, was known in the criminal underground world with the nickname Paunch, as the master coder behind the dangerous Blackhole exploit kit.
According to Russian authorities, Paunch and his partners used the exploit kit to deliver malware that defrauded Russian banks of over 70 million Russian Rubles (2.1 million USD / 1.5 million EUR, *according to 2013’s exchange rates).
Since Russian authorities don’t take kindly to Russian crooks that target their own country’s businesses, the suspects were quickly rounded up and after a two-year trial, Fedotov, together with six others were found guilty and received sentences that ranged from 5.5 and 8 years, in prison or corrective labor camps.
Besides Blackhole, Fedotov also worked on the Cool exploit kit
Fedotov’s life of crime started in 2010, when he developed the exploit kit, and according to Russian authorities, ended up making around $50,000 (€44,000) per month by selling his creation to over 1,000 customers.
The Blackhole exploit kit was put up for sale for $500 (€440) or $700 (€620) per month, depending on renting conditions, and was at one point the most widespread crimekit around.
After Fedotov’s arrest the kit’s source code was leaked online, but that didn’t stop some crooks using it even as recent as November 2015.
Along with the downfall of the Blackhole exploit kit, Fedotov’s arrest also meant the end of the Cool exploit kit project, on which Fedotov was working together with a fellow hacker known as “J.P. Morgan.”
The Cool exploit kit was pre-announced as a high-end crimeware kit that would also come with browser vulnerabilities, but the project failed to get off the ground after Paunch’s arrest.
Source:https://news.softpedia.com/
Working as a cyber security solutions architect, Alisa focuses on application and network security. Before joining us she held a cyber security researcher positions within a variety of cyber security start-ups. She also experience in different industry domains like finance, healthcare and consumer products.
