Russia charges 'criminal organization' behind Blackhole malware kit

[aelius]

The Russian government has charged a group of people with organized crime offenses related to the creation and use of the Blackhole malware kit.

Word first leaked out via Europol in October that a man going by the alias "Paunch", who was suspected of being the creator of the infamous crimeware tool, had been arrested in Russia.

On Friday, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs Investigation Department posted a notice that a total of 13 individuals had been charged with crimes under Article 210 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which covers "creation of a criminal community (criminal organization) and participation therein."

According to the Ministry's press release, the group used Trojan horse programs and other malware to engage in "massive embezzlement of funds from the accounts of individuals and legal entities," to the tune of about 70m Russian rubles ($2.1m).

Russian banks throughout Moscow, Tyumen, Ulyanovsk, Krasnodar, Petrozavodsk, and the Kursk region were reportedly targeted in the scheme.

All of that seems to have come to an end now, however, as security researchers report that the Blackhole kit stopped being updated shortly after the suspects were arrested – aren't life's little coincidences funny sometimes? – and cybercriminals have reportedly begun moving on to other tools.

None of the accused were named in the Russian government's notice.

Under Russian law, anyone convicted under paragraph 1 of Article 210, "creation of a criminal community (criminal organization) for the purpose of committing one or several grave or especially grave crimes," faces imprisonment for 12-20 years and fines of up to 1m rubles ($30,600).

The accused have also been charged under paragraph 2 of Article 210, "participation in a criminal community (criminal organization) or in an association of organizers, leaders, or other representatives of organized groups," which carries an additional penalty of 5-10 years' imprisonment and fines up to 500,000 rubles ($15,300).

The accused are all currently being held under "pretrial restraints," although no date was given for when the case is expected to be brought before a judge

Source: Russia charges 'criminal organization' behind Blackhole malware kit • The Register

[Usr6]

Who Is Paunch?

Last week, the world got the first glimpses of a man Russian authorities have accused of being “Paunch,” a computer crime kingpin whose “Blackhole” crimeware package has fueled an explosion of cybercrime over the past several years. So far, few details about the 27-year-old defendant have been released, save for some pictures of a portly lad and a list of his alleged transgressions. Today’s post follows a few clues from recent media coverage that all point to one very likely identity for this young man.

The first story in the Western media about Paunch’s arrest came on Oct. 8, 2013 from Reuters, which quoted an anonymous former Russian police detective. But the initial news of Paunch’s arrest appears to have broken on Russian news blogs several days earlier. On Oct. 5, Russian news outlet neslushi.info posted that a hacker by the name of Dmitry Fedotov had been arrested the night before in Togliatti, a city in Samara Oblast, Russia. The story noted that Fedotov was wanted for creating a program that was used by various organized crime groups to siphon roughly 26 billion rubles (USD $866 million) from unnamed banks. Another story from local news site Samara.ru on Oct. 8 references a Dmitry F. from Togliatti.

This is an interesting lead; last week’s story on Paunch cited information released by Russian forensics firm Group-IB, which did not include Paunch’s real name but said that he resided in Togliatti.

Fast-forward to this past week, and we see out of the Russian publication Vedomosti.ru a story stating that Paunch owned his own Web-development company. That story also cited Group-IB saying that Paunch had experience as an advertising manager. This Yandex profile includes a resume for a Dmitry Fedotov from Togliatti who specializes in Web programming and advertising, and lists “hack money” under his “professional goals” section. It also states that Fedotov attended the Volga State University of Service from 2003-2005.

That Yandex profile for Fedotov says his company is a site called “neting.ru,” a Web development firm. The current Web site registration records for that domain do not include an owner’s name, but a historic WHOIS record ordered from domaintools.com shows that neting.ru was originally registered in 2004 by a Dmitry E. Fedotov, using the email addresses box@neting.ru and tolst86@mail.ru.

A cached contact page for neting.ru at archive.org shows the same box@neting.ru email address and includes an ICQ instant messenger address, 360022. According to ICQ.com, that address belongs to a user who picked the nickname “tolst,” which roughly translates to “fatty.”

This brings up something I want to address from last week’s story: Some readers said they thought it was insensitive of me to point out that Paunch himself called attention to his most obvious physical trait. But this seems to be a very important detail: Paunch had a habit of picking self-effacing nicknames.

The pictures of Paunch released by Group-IB show a heavyset young man, and Paunch seems to have picked nicknames that called attention to his size. One email address known to have been used by the Blackhole author was “paunchik@googlemail.com” (“paunchik” means “doughnut” in Russian). Blackhole exploit kit users who wished to place their advertisements in the crimeware kit itself so that other customers would see the ads were instructed to pay for the advertisements by sending funds to a Webmoney purse Z356971281174, which is tied to the Webmoney ID 561656619879; that Webmoney ID uses the alias “puzan,” a variant of the Russian word ????, or “potbelly.”

Turns out, “tolst” was a common nickname picked by Paunch. We can see a user who picked that same “tolst” nickname posting in a Russian car forum in March 2013 about his new ride: a white Porsche Cayenne. According to this photo released by Group-IB, Paunch also owned a white Porsche Cayenne. Tolst posted pictures of the interior of his Porsche here.

Neting.ru’s archived FAQ points to an official payment page at virtual currency Webmoney, which includes the name Dmitry E. Fedotov and the ICQ number 360022. That same Webmoney account shows up on wmid.name, a site that lists account holders who have a reputation for being late with promised payments. The last account on the bottom of that page is an entry that lists the same Webmoney ID, along with Dmitry Evegeny Fedotov‘s date of birth (Nov. 6, 1986), passport number (3606578837), and physical address. It’s not clear when Fedotov was added to this list, but it’s possible he was simply unable to pay for promised transactions due to his early October arrest and detention.

This Odnoklassniki profile for a Dmitry Fedotov from Togliatti also puts his birthday at Nov. 6, and says he attended Volga State University of Service from 2003 to 2005.

Early on, Fedotov appears to have made a living by writing and selling Web scripts for various online currency exchange sites. But by 2009, this young man was growing more interested in computer security — specifically Web browser vulnerabilities.

The Web community Fido20.ru includes a member named “tolst” from Togliatti who gives his name as Dmitry Fedotov and was very active in discussions about network security, privacy and hacking. In this post from 2009 titled “Vulnerabilities in browsers and their plugin-ins,” Fedotov can be seen warning users about unspecified new vulnerabilities in Apple’s Quicktime and Microsoft’s DirectX versions 7 through 9.

In another thread, Fedotov encourages the sharing of browser exploits and provides links to several vulnerability archives. He also tells fellow forums members that they are asking to get hacked if they leave various browser plugins activated.

“As I have done before, I am asking all the users as well as IT Security professionals to disable all plug-ins and add-ons in their browsers,” Fedotov warned forum members. “Do not think that if you are not users of Internet money (web money), there is no danger of being infected. In this case, the infected PCs are turned into socks proxies, spam/ddos bots and all the bad activity is done under your name, so that law enforcement can place all the blame on your shoulders. Safe surfing and good luck to you.”

Sursa: Who Is Paunch? — Krebs on Security

un alt articol interesant:

Meet Paunch: The Accused Author of the BlackHole Exploit Kit — Krebs on Security

cam la ce nivel se juca: “...We have budgeted $450,000 to buy vulnerabilities of a browser and its plugins, which will be used only by us afterwards! ”