WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Police in the United States
and seven other countries seized computers and servers used to
run a “scareware” scheme that has netted more than $72 million
from victims tricked into buying fake anti-virus software.
Twenty-two computers and servers were seized in the United
States and 25 others in France, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, the
Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom, the U.S. Justice
Department said in a statement Wednesday.
The suspects involved in the scheme, who were not
identified, planted “scareware” on the computers of 960,000
victims. The scareware would pretend to find malicious software
on a computer. The goal is to persuade the victim to
voluntarily hand over credit card information, paying to
resolve a nonexistent problem.
Latvian authorities seized at least five bank accounts
believed to have been used by the leaders of the scam, and the
Justice Department said nothing about arrests.
U.S. authorities also said Wednesday they disrupted a
second scam, charging two Latvians with running a similar
scareware scheme that led to $2 million in losses through an
advertisement placed on a Minnesota newspaper’s website.
Peteris Sahurovs, 22, and Marina Maslobojeva, 23, were
arrested Tuesday in Latvia and face two counts of wire
fraud, one count of conspiracy and one count of computer fraud
in the United States, the Justice Department said.
“Scareware is just another tactic that cyber criminals are
using to take money from citizens and businesses around the
world,” said Assistant Director Gordon Snow of the FBI’s cyber
division.
‘BOTNETS’
Law enforcement officials would not confirm whether the
seizures were directly connected to a raid early Tuesday
morning at a web-hosting company in northern Virginia where
they took servers, a move that disrupted more than 120
websites.
U.S. authorities have been more aggressive this year in
trying to stem cybercrime and have been scrambling to
investigate several hacking attempts on U.S. institutions and
corporations.
In March, law enforcement raided servers used by a
”botnet,” essentially computers controlled by criminals without
the knowledge of the computers’ owners. Authorities severed the
IP addresses, effectively disabling the botnet.
That operation, nicknamed Rustock, had been one of the
biggest producers of spam e-mail, with some tech security
experts estimating it produced half the spam that fills
people’s junk mail bins.
In April, government programmers shut down a botnet which
controlled more than 2 million PCs around the world to spread a
computer virus named Coreflood, which grabbed banking
credentials and other sensitive financial data. Losses were
estimated at about $100 million.
A botnet is essentially one or more servers that spread
malicious software and use the software to send spam or to
steal personal information or data that can be used to empty a
victim’s bank account.
(Reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky and Diane Bartz; Editing by
Peter Cooney and Todd Eastham)
Los Angeles Times
