Zeus, IcedID Malware Kingpin Faces 40 Years In Prison (theregister.com) 39
Connor Jones reports via The Register: A Ukrainian cybercrime kingpin who ran some of the most pervasive malware operations faces 40 years in prison after spending nearly a decade on the FBI's Cyber Most Wanted List. Vyacheslav Igorevich Penchukov, 37, pleaded guilty this week in the US to two charges related to his leadership role in both the Zeus and IcedID malware operations that netted millions of dollars in the process. Penchukov's plea will be seen as the latest big win for US law enforcement in its continued fight against cybercrime and those that enable it. However, authorities took their time getting him in 'cuffs. [...]
"Malware like IcedID bleeds billions from the American economy and puts our critical infrastructure and national security at risk," said US attorney Michael Easley for the eastern district of North Carolina. "The Justice Department and FBI Cyber Squad won't stand by and watch it happen, and won't quit coming for the world's most wanted cybercriminals, no matter where they are in the world. This operation removed a key player from one of the world's most notorious cybercriminal rings. Extradition is real. Anyone who infects American computers had better be prepared to answer to an American judge."
This week, he admitted one count of conspiracy to commit a racketeer influenced and corrupt organizations (RICO) act offense relating to Zeus, and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in relation to IcedID. Each count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years. His sentencing date is set for May 9, 2024. Zeus malware, a banking trojan that formed a botnet for financial theft, caused over $100 million in losses before its 2014 dismantlement. Its successor, SpyEye, incorporated enhanced features for financial fraud. Despite the 2014 takedown of Zeus, Penchukov moved on to lead IcedID, a similar malware first found in 2017. IcedID evolved from banking fraud to ransomware, severely affecting the University of Vermont Medical Center in 2020 with over $30 million in damages.
"Malware like IcedID bleeds billions from the American economy and puts our critical infrastructure and national security at risk," said US attorney Michael Easley for the eastern district of North Carolina. "The Justice Department and FBI Cyber Squad won't stand by and watch it happen, and won't quit coming for the world's most wanted cybercriminals, no matter where they are in the world. This operation removed a key player from one of the world's most notorious cybercriminal rings. Extradition is real. Anyone who infects American computers had better be prepared to answer to an American judge."
This week, he admitted one count of conspiracy to commit a racketeer influenced and corrupt organizations (RICO) act offense relating to Zeus, and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in relation to IcedID. Each count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years. His sentencing date is set for May 9, 2024. Zeus malware, a banking trojan that formed a botnet for financial theft, caused over $100 million in losses before its 2014 dismantlement. Its successor, SpyEye, incorporated enhanced features for financial fraud. Despite the 2014 takedown of Zeus, Penchukov moved on to lead IcedID, a similar malware first found in 2017. IcedID evolved from banking fraud to ransomware, severely affecting the University of Vermont Medical Center in 2020 with over $30 million in damages.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, as we all believe, nobody has ever committed a crime in Ukraine. *eyeroll*
Try harder with your trolling next time.
Re:But, but, but, Ukrainian??? (Score:4, Informative)
Ukranian *people* are just like anyone else. Some of them are criminals, most are decent people.
Same for Russia, the difference is in their Government.
Re: (Score:1)
Russia and Ukraine are similarly corrupt.
https://www.transparency.org/e... [transparency.org]
The difference is Russia -also- murders people out of political favor and attacks their neighbors. Ukraine only fires people out of favor but doesn't attack their neighbors. Both have fake elections or don't hold them at all. Ukraine is not as bad as Russia but still not a great look.
Re:But, but, but, Ukrainian??? (Score:5, Informative)
You see no difference (updating years, since for some reason you chose an out-of-date year) between ranking #104/180 (42,1% of countries) and ranking #141/180 (21,6% of countries)?
Ukraine is Balkans-level / Panama-level / Turkey-level corrupt.
Russia is Uganda-level corrupt.
Are you serious? Let's compare presidents, shall we [paxforpeace.nl]?
For general freedom, we turn to Freedom House [freedomhouse.org], where Ukraine is ranked 50-100, and Russia 16/100. Except when you look at the breakdown, Ukraine's ranking is greatly hurt by the ongoing conflict and would be much higher without it. It's previous score was 61 (not much lower than Hungary), and even that was hurt by the Donbas conflict.
For the specific topic of "credible elections", we turn to Democracy Tracker [idea.int]. Click "representation", then "credible elections". Ukraine scores 0.57, vs. Russia's 0.37 (that's IMHO hilariously high for Russia, but whatever). 0.57 is once again typical Balkans-level (and higher than Hungary, for example).
Probably the next closest category to your topic would be "elected government". Clicking on it we see Ukraine ranks 0.76, vs. again 0.37 in Russia. For contrast, the US is ranked 0.83.
So I mean, by "still not a great look" you mean "pretty average globally", I guess?
Re: But, but, but, Ukrainian??? (Score:3)
Most european countries cancelled their elections during WW2. Were they corrupt too?
Re: (Score:2)
Ukrainian governments have been removed from office as a result of an election defeat. That has never happened in Russia.
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When was the last Ukrainian election? 2019.
What's the date for the next one after that? Cancelled.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
If I'm Ukrainian and don't like Zelenskyy's policies what voting options do I have? None.
If I'm Russian and don't like Putin's policies what voting options do I have? None.
What's the difference?
None.
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Same thing happened in the UK. The 1916 election was cancelled due to WW1 and we had to wait until after the war ended in 1918.
Then the 1940 election was cancelled due to WW2 and we had to wait until 1945.
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And that's a good thing??
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It was an unfortunately necessary thing. You can't hold a fair election in the middle of a war zone.
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UK was a war zone in ww1? USA held elections in ww1 and ww2. Neither was a war zone any more than UK in ww1 and similar to UK ww2.
Yes London was getting bombed during ww2. What about a single city being hit on occasion makes an election impossible?
You see nothing wrong with the same people who are up for election having the power to arbitrarily cancel elections?
Is it ok Hamas hasn't held a single election? After all Gaza is a war zone so no elections. Right?
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It was a lot more than just London getting bombed in WW2. It would be much easier to list the cities that weren't bombed, basically just Cambridge.
And a substantial proportion of the country was away fighting in that war. How do you arrange for them to vote, and get the votes back to the counting centres securely. How do you arrange polling stations when you don't know whether they are going to end up being a pile of rubble by election day? How do you arrange hustings/town halls with the candidates when the
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Soldiers over seas got mail. They could send mail. And just like we do today that's all that's needed to vote.
Could Gaza have voted on oh say... October 6th?
Yes, they could. They went almost 20 years without even pretending they would,ever hold another election. Because they're at war? Israel was in the same war yet managed to hold regular elections. Lebanon is a basket case, holds elections.
Did the entire UK just come to a stop because they were being bombed? No. Everything was going full bore. Wh
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You see no difference (updating years, since for some reason you chose an out-of-date year) between ranking #104/180 (42,1% of countries) and ranking #141/180 (21,6% of countries)?
Ukraine is Balkans-level / Panama-level / Turkey-level corrupt.
Russia is Uganda-level corrupt.
Are you serious? Let's compare presidents, shall we [paxforpeace.nl]?
For general freedom, we turn to Freedom House [freedomhouse.org], where Ukraine is ranked 50-100, and Russia 16/100. Except when you look at the breakdown, Ukraine's ranking is greatly hurt by the ongoing conflict and would be much higher without it. It's previous score was 61 (not much lower than Hungary), and even that was hurt by the Donbas conflict.
For the specific topic of "credible elections", we turn to Democracy Tracker [idea.int]. Click "representation", then "credible elections". Ukraine scores 0.57, vs. Russia's 0.37 (that's IMHO hilariously high for Russia, but whatever). 0.57 is once again typical Balkans-level (and higher than Hungary, for example).
Probably the next closest category to your topic would be "elected government". Clicking on it we see Ukraine ranks 0.76, vs. again 0.37 in Russia. For contrast, the US is ranked 0.83.
So I mean, by "still not a great look" you mean "pretty average globally", I guess?
Ukraine had some serious corruption issues since the dissolution of the USSR. Zelensky got elected on an anti corruption platform and was seriously struggling to implement it until Russia invaded. They've managed to drop down several corruption indexes but this has been in recent years (2010 onwards). It wasn't that long ago when Ukraine was considered "Uganda" level corrupt, the Ukraine has really been pushing hard to be eligible to join the EU, being a functioning democracy is key to that and Russia has b
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He is obviously a Russian double-agent wanting to make Ukraine look bad! You can safely blame Russia again on that one.
It's a waste of time trying to make the Ukrainians who haven't deserted the sinking ship look bad.
They're all going to be dead soon thanks to America's bravery in sending weapons but no soldiers.
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Why should the US send soldiers to Ukraine to directly confront Russia? What is the legs or moral basis for that judgement? The US has sent more aid than the rest of the world combined. How many other countries have stepped up to send the kind and quality of aid the US has, the money the US has or a single front line solider?
It is not the US's job to police the world, shedding American blood and burning riches to defend the rest of the planet. When we do, you call us war mongers, when we don't you call
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The EU provided about 92 billion dollars of aid to Ukraine** over the same period that the US provided about 75 billion. Let alone "the rest of the world".
** "€31 billion in financial, economic and humanitarian support via EU budget. €9.45 billion of grants, loans and guarantees provided by EU member states. €17 billion in support for refugees within the EU. €28 billion in military support."
And can we stop pretending like these are large numbers? Like 1/4 to 1/3rd of the US aid was loan
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During what period? From day 1 to now? And how much has the US already ear marked vs the rest of EU promises?
And who is sending what weapons? Without US weapons and munitions it would've been over already.
What weapons and munitions did your country send? How much more is on the way?
And ooooh boo fucking who these were -loans- not free gifts! Holy fuck, I hope the average Ukrainian isn't pissing about us loaning them money instead of paying for their whole fucking war. Jfc. Are you going to criticize
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The US has sent more aid than the rest of the world combined.
The US have sent 26.8% of the total help. See a variety of histograms https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics... [ifw-kiel.de] "Government support to Ukraine by country group: EU institutions+countries 144.1 G€, US 67.7 G€, others 40.6 G€" What the US ranks first (and more than the rest of world combined) for is for direct deliveries of ammunitions (because US had stockpiles of them while EU had zero). These amounts are accounted for in the data above.
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I looked at your link. Europe is sending humanitarian aid, primarily, according to your own link.
In other words food and blankets, maybe some boots and a few bandaids.
That's nice. It doesn't win wars. This thread was about the US getting involved by directly sending -soldiers- and accusing us of being *cowards* for not getting directly involved on the ground in a US v Russia ground war.
But yeah nice that EU sent blankets.
How many soldiers has Europe sent?
*crickets*
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looked at your link. Europe is sending humanitarian aid, primarily, according to your own link.
You probably made a mistake in reading the caption. The larger category is "financial". First histogram, EU alone: 77 G€ (financial), 5.6 G€ (military), 2.2 G€ (humanitarian). The financial help provided by the EU covers Ukraine's government budget (pre-war Ukraine 29 G€/a revenue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ).
How many soldiers has Europe sent?
I know your were originally replying to a comment discussing US sending soldiers. I specifically refrained from addressing this topic. I am not advocating for sending foreign
Re: (Score:2)
This. Exactly. The OP is an excellent example of the left-wing hypocrites that are doing everything they can to drive this nation into the ground.
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Why should the US send soldiers to Ukraine to directly confront Russia? What is the legs or moral basis for that judgement?
If you live in a world with competing social and ideological structures and you want yours to withstand the test of time, then it is prudent to contain those structures that are in direct opposition to yours by reducing their ability to expand and spread their influence. Ignoring your adversaries and allowing them unchecked expansion and exertion of their influence usually ends with your invasion and removal from the world stage.
Morality is irrelevant because war is an inherently immoral thing, with each si
"Guns don't kill people, people kill people." (Score:2)
If a gun kills someone it's usually because that gun was pointed at that person and discharged by themselves or another individual. That's how guns work as far as I know. That person is culpable for that act.
If someone writes malicious code that rips people off via botnet or phishing... who really pulls the trigger?
In one of America's numerous famous school shootings, the media and the public overwhelmingly blamed the resource officer who's responsibility is to allegedly protect the staff and students. He w
40 years? Why plead guilty? (Score:1)
If the sentence is 40 years after pleading guilty (which likely means life considering the conditions in US prisons), wouldn't it make more sense to plead not guilty and take any slim chance of getting off instead?
"We'll give you 40 years if you plead guilty or even longer if you make us go through the effort of prosecuting you." There's not much of a practical difference there, really.