One of the developers of the Blackshades spying tool admitted his guilty to distributing malware on Wednesday at Manhattan's federal court.
A Swedish citizen, Alex Yucel (24), was accused of participating in his development Blackshades RAT (remote access trojans) as well as for sale from 2010 to 2013 through an organized network of thousands of people.
The other developer who had been accused of developing the malware applications is Michael Hogue, who pleaded guilty in January 2013 and is currently awaiting sentencing, according to information from the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.
Brendan Johnston (manager of Blackshades), Marlen Rappa and Kyle Fedorek, who were arrested after having bought Blackshades, are also waiting for their sentence.
The RAT was distributed through an "underground" forum and allowed an attacker to access data on the affected computer, collect information that was "dropped" on the keyboard, and activate the camera, to spy on the victim.
In its list of features, there was and is the ability to conduct distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS).
The two developers had the malicious tool from 40 to 100 dollars, and are believed to have received around 350.000 dollars from sales.
According to researchers, Blackshades has infected over 500.000 computers in over 100 countries. In 2014, the FBI conducted a worldwide operation to prosecute the Blackshades, which ended with the arrest of approximately 100 people.
Yucel was arrested in Moldova by 2013 and is the first to be issued by that country in the United States.
He faces the maximum prison sentence that reaches 10 years and is scheduled to appear in court at 22 May to appeal.
According to the original 2013 indictment, Yucel was charged with a total of five counts: conspiracy to commit electronic piracy, distribution of malware, conspiracy to commit device access fraud, and grand larceny identity.
