3 Russian Cyber Criminal Who Was The Master Mind of Banking Trojan 'Gozi' Charged in New York
Yet again another serious issue of cyber crime get resolved when the FBI tracked and figured out the master mind of infamous 'Gozi banking Trojan' which effected more than millions of system world wide, including a handful at NASA, leading to tens of millions of dollars in lost banking funds and damages to computer systems and networks. Three alleged international cyber criminals from Russia, responsible for creating and distributing 'Gozi' that infected over one million computers and caused tens of millions of dollars in losses charged in Manhattan Federal Court. Mihai Ionut Paunescu aged 28, a Romanian, Deniss Calovskis, 27, a Latvian, and Nikita Vladimirovich Kuzmin, 25, of the Russian Federation, are charged with computer intrusion, conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud and access device fraud. Federal authorities said the three were arrested last week; Kuzmin is being held in New York, while Paunescu is in custody in Romania and Calovskis in Latvia.
According to the press release of FBI -Deniss Calovskis, a/k/a “Miami,” a Latvian national who allegedly wrote some of the computer code that made the Gozi virus so effective, was arrested in Latvia in November 2012. Mihai Ionut Paunescu, a/k/a “Virus,” a Romanian national who allegedly ran a “bulletproof hosting” service that enabled cyber criminals to distribute the Gozi virus, the Zeus trojan, and other notorious malware and to conduct other sophisticated cyber crimes, was arrested in Romania in December 2012.
The cases are being handled by the Complex Frauds Unit of the United States Attorney’s Office. Assistant United States Attorneys Sarah Lai, Nicole Friedlander, and Thomas G.A. Brown, along with Trial Attorney Carol Sipperly of the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the Department of Justice on the Paunescu case, are in charge of the prosecution. The charges contained in the Indictments are merely accusations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
| Defendant | Age and Residence | Charges | Maximum Penalty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nikita Kuzmin | 25; Moscow, Russia | Conspiracy to commit bank fraud; bank fraud; conspiracy to commit access device fraud; access device fraud; conspiracy to commit computer intrusion; computer intrusion | 95 years in prison |
| Deniss Calovskis | 27; Riga, Latvia | Conspiracy to commit bank fraud; conspiracy to commit access device fraud; conspiracy to commit computer intrusion; conspiracy to commit wire fraud; conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft | 67 years in prison |
| Mihai Ionut Paunescu | 28; Bucharest, Romania | Conspiracy to commit computer intrusion; conspiracy to commit bank fraud; conspiracy to commit wire fraud | 60 years in prison |
The Gozi virus is malicious computer code, or “malware,” that steals personal bank account information, including usernames and passwords, from the users of affected computers. It was named by private sector information security experts in the U.S. who, in 2007, discovered that previously unrecognized malware was stealing personal bank account information from computers across Europe on a vast scale, while remaining virtually undetectable in the computers it infected. To date, the Gozi virus has infected over one million victim computers worldwide, among them at least 40,000 computers in the U.S., including computers belonging to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), as well as computers in Germany, Great Britain, Poland, France, Finland, Italy, Turkey, and elsewhere, and it has caused tens of millions of dollars in losses to the individuals, businesses, and government entities whose computers were infected.
The Gozi virus was distributed to victims’ computers in several different ways. In one method, the virus was disguised as an apparently benign .pdf document which, when opened, secretly installed the Gozi virus on the victim’s computer. Once installed, the Gozi virus—which was intentionally designed to be undetectable by anti-virus software—collected data from the infected computer in order to capture personal bank account information including usernames and passwords. That data was then transmitted to various computer servers controlled by the cyber criminals who used the Gozi virus. These cyber criminals then used the personal bank account information to transfer funds out of the victims’ bank accounts and ultimately into their own personal possession.
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