US indicts botnet operator

Moldovan botnet operator Alexander Lefterov, also known as Alipatime, Alipako, and Uptime, was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice for his involvement in widespread attacks against U.S.-based computers, BleepingComputer reports.

Aside from leveraging malware to facilitate the exfiltration of credentials and the theft of cash from their victims through infiltrating financial, retail, and payment processing accounts, Lefterov and his co-conspirators also enabled other threat actors to target victims' networks with ransomware and other malicious payloads by providing botnet access through a hidden virtual network computing server, according to the Justice Department.

Lefterov could be imprisoned for two to 10 years for each of the charges included in his nine-count indictment.

"Protecting Americans in cyber space is a top priority, and we will aggressively pursue anyone, no matter if they're on U.S. soil or overseas, who believes our population is an easy target," noted FBI Special Agent Kevin Rojek.