Ukrainian hacker who stole over $ 70 million detained in Spain

The Spanish police, with the assistance of the National Police of Ukraine, detained a citizen of our country who was on the international wanted list for his participation in the development of scareware. The Ukrainian’s malicious activities, which he carried out between 2006 and 2011, led to the infection of hundreds of thousands of users' computers.

Police detained the fugitive at the airport when he arrived on a flight to Barcelona. He was charged with causing «economic damage» in excess of $ 70 million.

«Through this computer code and with the help of a complex international network of computer servers, the Ukrainian infected the victims' computers and caused pop-up messages to appear on their screens warning that the terminals were infected with a virus. It also contained information that the victims should purchase anti-virus software to solve the problem. Victims paid up to $ 129 to get the fake security programs, unaware that they were giving money to the person who originally infected their computer,» the Spanish police website says.

It should be noted that the term scareware refers to malware that deceives users by warning them of false threats. Such attacks are aimed at intimidating people (for example, the malware informs the victim that many viruses have been detected on their device) to force them to purchase a fake security program or share confidential information with the attackers.

Neither the personal information about the criminal nor how many years he will spend behind bars is currently known.

Just a few days ago, it became known about a large-scale hacker attack on Ukrainians by the Russian terrorist state. According to CERT-UA, the group of attackers includes former SBU «officers» in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea who betrayed Ukraine in 2014 and started working for the Russian Federal Security Service. The main task of the group is cyber espionage against the security and defense forces of Ukraine. Attacks on information infrastructure facilities are also known.