The Cypriot and Norwegian police arrested in Cyprus and in Νορβηγία respectively two men who are considered the main contributors to the creation and distribution of Dridex and Citadel, two very powerful and highly efficient banking trojan.
The first of the two is a 30-year-old man from the Republic of Moldova, whom the authorities arrested while attempting to defraud a bank for 3,5 million dollars ( € 3.120.000,00 ).
The man was arrested in a rented home in Paphos, where he lived temporarily with his wife.
The arrest was made after anonymous information, which stated that this man was a key contributor to an international organized crime gang responsible for the distribution of the banking Trojan with the name Dridex (Cridex, Bugat, Dyre), like us informs researcher Brian Kreds.
This man also appears to be a member of the famous Business Club APT group, which operates the Gameover Zeus botnet and infected over 500 million computers and was responsible for stealing about 100 million dollars (90 million) from various bank and financial institutions.
Meanwhile, in Fredrikstad, Norway… and eleven months earlier, a 27-year-old Russian man known as Mark was arrested and detained at the request of the FBI.
According to a Norwegian newspaper, the man is blaming for the operation of the malware Citadel software, which is already used to infect users with spyware and exfiltrate banking details related to capturing keystrokes and downloading videos and photos from the victim's computer.
The Citadel malware has been around since 2012, and was also used to distribute it ransomware Reveton.
According to US Department of Justice sources, the researchers they have hard evidence that Mark is really Aquabox, the creator and owner of the Citadel trojan.
The Russian has been under house arrest for the past 11 months, and authorities are waiting for extradition proceedings in the United States to be completed.
As with Mark, the creator of Dridex is also facing its release in the US.
