British Cyber-cops Arrest Trojan Criminals of Ukraine

The London Metropolitan Police Service's PCeU (Police Central E-Crime Unit), on October 31, 2011, announced the sentencing of a pair of Ukrainian nationals after they were found using a banker's Trojan for stealing money out of several Brits' accounts, the number remaining unknown, published CSO on November 2, 2011.

Yevhen Kulibaba, aged 33, and Yuriy Konovalenko, aged 29, received a slightly less than 4-years imprisonment each.

They employed malicious program for siphoning online banking details belonging to unwitting victims prior to transferring funds out of the hijacked accounts and getting them deposited inside numerous other accounts fraudulently created in Britain.

Kulibaba headed the gang and while based in Ukraine, he selected certain target accounts for assault as also assisted the gang in setting up fresh accounts for dumping the illicitly gained funds into. It was recognized that Konovalenko was the actual man who was the direct overseer of offensive operations out of UK.

And while, it isn't known how much money the criminals' group stole, an analysis of the thirteen individuals imprisoned hitherto made officials determine that no less than 2.9m pounds went missing from September 2009 to March 2010, albeit the group tried filching a minimum of 4.3m pounds.

The investigation that was given the name "Operation Lath" had the UK police along with prosecutors involved in addition to the Department of Justice and FBI.

Incidentally, Operation Lath, during September 2011, arrested 20 individuals living in London.

Colin Wetherill, detective inspector belonging to UK's Metropolitan PCeU said that the authorities were striving for minimizing the harm the current type of fraudulent operations caused for scaring people planning such conspiracies as well as book them to justice. InformationWeek reported this on November 2, 2011.

Security researchers, remarking about these arrests, stated that Internet usage for banking purposes were increasingly getting to be a convenient alternative for consumers. Nonetheless, the practice emphasized inbuilt hazards regarding the way people handled own security on the Net, and while it was simple for people to merely presume that they wouldn't be subject to any of those problems, truly trying for ensuring their avoidance was somewhat harder.

Related article: British Telecommunications Introduces New anti-spam System

» SPAMfighter News - 11/10/2011