BREDOLAB BOTNET MASTERMIND GETS FOUR YEARS IN ARMENIAN JAIL

Infosecurity Magazine
http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/25942/bredolab-botnet-mastermind-gets-four-years-in-armenian-jail
May 23 2012

Georg Avanesov, the man convicted of masterminding the Bredolab botnet,
received four years in an Armenian jail for a criminal enterprise
that netted $125,000 per month at its height.

Avansov, a Russian citizen who was arrest in 2010 in Armenia, was
convicted on Monday of creating and running the Bredolab botnet of
30 million computers, reported Radio Free Europe.

At its height, Bredolab was sending out some 3.6 billion infected
e-mail messages per day and was spreading at a rate of some three
million computers a month.

As reported by Infosecurity, Bredolab's main purpose was to download
other malicious programs onto victim computers. One of the botnet's
most distinguishing features was its method of operation: legitimate
websites that had been hacked were used to spread the botnet's payload.

Visitors to these websites were redirected to malicious
resources, which resulted in their computers being infected with
Backdoor.Win32.Bredolab.

One of the key features of the Bredolab botnet was the closely
repeating cycle the botnet used to build up its zombie networks,
in which infected computers subsequently infected websites, which in
turn infected new victim computers.