Suspects Behind Facebook Koobface Hack Named - allenmignobt

The alleged masterminds rear Koobface, a despiteful program that targets Facebook members, have been identified away security investigators.

Five men living in St. Petersburg, Russia, were named every bit the kingpins behind Koobface: Anton "KrotReal" Korotchenko; Stanislav "leDed" Avdeyko; Svyatoslav E. "PsycoMan" Polichuck; Roman P. "PoMuc" Koturbach; and Black lovage "Floppy" Koltysehv.

Although their nefarious activities accept been known for geezerhood by Facebook, security investigators and police enforcement authorities, the crew has been living the full life from their base in St. Petersburg, The New York Times reported.

Koobface is a malware program that infects computers and turns them into "zombies" that fundament be controlled aside hackers. The software has been wont to terrorize millions of Net users since 2008, according to a composition from protection researchers at Sophos.

The Times according that since its coming into court, Koobface has earned its operators an estimated $2 million.

Along Facebook, Koobface is spread through bogus messages. An infected computer sends a message, without the computer owner's knowledge, to every last the "friends" of a Facebook account. The content contains links that, if clicked, will taint the clicker's computer. Formerly a computer is infected, it can be used to propagate Koobface, send spam and perpetrate unusual pernicious activities.

In its report, Sophos is close to mention that none of the St. Petersburg suspects it has linked to Koobface make been charged or found bloodguilty of whatsoever crimes. It added that all the evidence gathered for its reputation has been turned over to law enforcement authorities "and we wait to see what — if some — actions are taken to bring downcast the Koobface bunch."

Sophos has good reasonableness to follow skeptical most the Koobface suspects being brought to justice. In the recent, it has been difficult to apprehend international cyber criminals. That's because they choose their bases of operations carefully, locating them in places where local practice of law enforcement will ric a dim eyeball to their activities and general cooperation with international law enforcement agencies is frail.

Throughout the years of its existence, Koobface has had its ups and downs. One of its low points was in 2022 when security researchers, law enforcement authorities and Internet service providers were able to take down several of its dictation and control servers. Those servers are wont to control all the zombies in the botnet.

But at the closing of last year, a new "with-it" reading of Koobface appeared on Facebook. Typically, the malware used existing accounts to spread its shenaniga throughout Facebook. The streetwise variation uses the botnet itself to create bogus account that can be put-upon to spread the malware. The proficiency has proven to be an operational one and one Facebook's defenses seem ill panoplied to stop, according to security researchers.

Keep up freelance engineering writer John P. Mello Jr. and Today@PCWorld on Twitter.