THE HAGUE: US and European police said on Thursday they have smashed a huge international cybercrime network that used Russian malware to steal $100 million from tens of thousands of victims worldwide.

Prosecutions have been launched in Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine and the United States over the scam, while five Russians charged in the US remain on the run, the EU police agency Europol said.

The “organised crime network behind $100m in malware attacks” targeted “more than 41,000 victims, primarily businesses and their financial institutions”, Europol said.

Police in Germany and Bulgaria were also involved.

The cyber gang used GozNym malware to infect victims’ computers, steal their online banking login details and then siphon money from their accounts.

The stolen money was then laundered in US and other accounts.

Scott Brady, the US Attorney General for the western district of Pennsylvania where the US indictment was unsealed, said the operation was an “unprecedented” international effort.

“Unsuspecting European and American victims thought they were clicking on a simple invoice, but were instead giving hackers access to their most sensitive information,” Brady added.

The alleged leader of the GozNym criminal network, Alexander Konovolov, 35, of Tbilisi, who goes by the online name “NoNe”, was arrested in the former Soviet state of Georgia, the US Department of Justice said.

His alleged technical assistant Marat Kazandjian, 31, aka “phant0m,” was also arrested in Georgia.

Konovolov recruited hackers who advertised their services on “Russian-speaking online criminal forums”, and eventually controlled the malware-infected computers of more than 41,000 victims, Europol said.

Published in Dawn, May 17th, 2019