28 Russian old Nikita Kuzmin, developer of Gozi Trojan, has been convicted yesterday to 37 months in prison. In addition to the jail term, the court also fined him $6.934.979 for the damages he caused by developing the banking maliciousυ software Gozi.
Kuzmin created the Gozi Trojan in 2007 and released it to the hacking underground Forums χρησιμοποιώντας το ψευδώνυμο “76”. Το κακόβουλο λογισμικό ήταν καινοτόμο όταν δημιουργήθηκε, καθώς ήταν το πρώτο που πρόσφερε MaaS (malware-as-a-service).
The Gozi banking trojan makes “Web injects” in modules that exploit various processes in the infected browser computers. So he could overlay legitimate pages with fake ones, and of course he preferred banking portals.
The authorities arrested Kuzmin in the US 2010. The hacker reached a co-operation agreement with the prosecuting authorities and confessed his guilt later to 2011.
Apart from Kuzmin, the US authorities also blame other two others as co-workers.
One of these is Deniss Calovskis, a Latvian hacker who created many of Gozi's modules. The authorities arrested Calovskis in November of 2012, and after a long and prolonged extradition process.
The second suspect who helped Kuzmin is the Romanian, Mihai Ionut Paunescu, who was arrested 2012 in Romania.
