A U.S. District Court judge in Atlanta last week handed a five year prison sentence to Mark Vartanyan, a Russian hacker who helped develop and sell the once infamous and widespread Citadel banking trojan. This fact has been reported by countless media outlets, but far less well known is the fascinating backstory about how Vartanyan got caught. For several ye

The Russian hacker Mark Vartanyan was sentenced to five years in prison for his involvement in the development and maintenance of the Citadel botnets. It’s a terrific moment for cyber criminals, law enforcement worldwide continues their fight against illegal activities online and the recent shut down of AlphaBay and Hansa black markets demonstrate it.

The Russian author of the notorious Citadel malware which infected over 11 million PCs and stole an astonishing $500 million from bank accounts has pleaded guilty to his crimes.29-year-old Mark Vartanyan, who went by the online handle of “Kolypto”, was arrested in the Norwegian town of Fredrikstad in 2015 at the request of the FBI. His extraditio

Our security roundup series covers the week’s trending topics in the world of InfoSec. In this quick-read compilation, we’ll let you know of the latest news and controversies that the industry has been talking about recently.Here’s what you don’t want to miss from the week of September 28, 2015:A massive data breach at Experian – one of largest credit report

Authorities in Europe have arrested alleged key players behind the development and deployment of sophisticated banking malware, including Citadel and Dridex. The arrests involved a Russian national and a Moldovan man, both of whom were traveling or residing outside of their native countries and are now facing extradition to the United States. Last week, a 30

The author behind one strain of banking malware, Gozi, has plead guilty and is awaiting sentencing while two other men, who allegedly had a hand in developing the banking malware Citadel and Dridex, were recently apprehended.Latvian Deniss Calovskis, 30, acknowledged in a federal court in New York on Friday that he wrote some of the code behind Gozi, a Troja

Security experts at Fidelis firm discovered that variants of the AlienSpy remote access trojan (RAT) are currently being used in global phishing campaigns. Cyber criminals have exploited the AlienSpy RAT to deliver the popular Citadel banking Trojan and maintain the persistence inside the targeted architecture with a backdoor 

The Citadel Trojan has once again branched out beyond its roots as banking malware and is now targeting the master passwords guarding major password management products.Researchers from IBM Trusteer today said they’ve notified makers of the nexus Personal Security Client, Password Safe and KeePass about a new configuration file found on an infected com

New Configuration of Citadel Trojan Discovered by IBM Trusteer Researchers In these days of endless breaches, securing user access by enforcing unique, complex passwords and strong authentication is imperative. The onslaught of data breaches in the past year alone, with the majority of the breaches involving compromised credentials, forced users to constantl

Cybercrime tools continue to crossover into the realm of nation-state targeted attacks, with the latest example being a variant of the Citadel banking Trojan used in attacks against petrochemical companies in the Middle East.The attacks took place within the past few months, said researchers at IBM Trusteer who spotted repurposed versions of Citadel on the c

The global cloud computing company Salesforce.com is warning its customers that the Dyre Trojan might be used to target their login credentials. The Dyre banking Trojan, which typically targets customers of large financial institutions, was recently used in a large-scale, credential-phishing campaign targeting Bank of America, Citigroup, Royal Bank of Scotla

In July of this year, six individuals in Russia and the United States were charged with taking part in an international hacking ring that stole more than $1 million. However, this time the attackers didn’t filch credit cards or banking information. According to reports, Vadim Polyakov, a Russian national, allegedly hacked over 1,600 accounts on a

Using malware to control a malware-infected device is nothing new. In fact, in our article about malware trends in 2014, Trusteer, an IBM Company, Chief Technology Officer Amit Klein specifically points out that malware will again use old-school techniques to overcome security solutions. One of these tools is the ability to remotely take over a device and us