Here’s some bad news for hackers. A man who made three crore computers his slaves has been sentenced to jail in Armenia. 

Don’t write this off as something not related to you as he was arrested in a far-off land. Some of the infected computers might as well be in your country too.

The modus operandi is this. Security solutions firm Sophos said he would send across spam messages with malicious links. If you click one such link, it would stealthily download software. This would turn your computer the hacker’s slave.

They would sell chunks of these slaves from the botnet stable to hackers in a different plane who would do the actual damage.

“Prosecutors in Armenia alleged that the hacker was earning £80,000 a month, renting out access to the compromised computers to criminals. They who wanted to send out spam, spread malware and fake anti-virus attacks, and launch targeted attacks,” Sophos said.

At its peak, it is estimated the hacker’s botnet was spewing out more than 300 crore infected emails every day.

Legitimate websites were hacked to spread the malicious payloads that infected and recruited visiting computers into the botnet. This network spreads like wildfire and steals usernames and passwords.

"It's easy to see how such a large network of infected PCs was created, as people clicked on seemingly legitimate attachments and websites, oblivious to the infection," Mr Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos, said.

kurmanath@thehindu.co.in

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