Bredolab botnet mastermind sentenced to four years

An Armenian man charged in 2010 with running the prolific Bredolab botnet was sentenced this week in his home country to four years in prison. Georgy Avanesov, in his late 20s, was responsible for using the botnet, a collection of millions of infected computers, to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. An Armenian court news release specifically cited an attack on the Russian telecom company Macomnet, which resulted in nearly 200 customers being unable to use website services. At its peak, the botnet, which was dismantled when Avanesov was arrested, was capable of infecting three million new computers each month with malware.