Sentencing of Russia's first computer phishing case

    In Moscow, a verdict was passed on the first criminal case in Russia on computer phishing, the victims of which were more than 140 clients of a large bank. It was possible to condemn the hackers with the assistance of Kaspersky Lab experts.

    The Chertanovsky court of Moscow found the brothers Eugene and Dmitry Popelyshev guilty of committing crimes under part 2 of article 272, part 1 of the article 273 and h. 4 Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (unlawful access to computer-protected information by law, the use and distribution of malware for electronic computers, as well as fraud committed by a group of persons in a preliminary conspiracy to cause damage on an especially large scale).

    It was established that the brothers Eugene and Dmitry Popelyshi, having studied the information on specialized online forums, as well as the basic principles of the remote banking service system, developed a plan for embezzlement of funds from the accounts of clients of “one of the largest Russian banks”.

    For technical support, the brothers brought in a student from Kaliningrad, Alexander Sarbin, who developed a copy of the original remote banking service web page. On this fake web page, hackers posted the numbers they rented as technical support contacts. They also took advantage of a trojan, which, after activation on an infected computer, replaced some of the parameters involved in the bank-client functionality.

    As a result, any customer calls to the banking site were redirected to servers owned by hackers, where they hosted the created fake web page. There, clients, not suspecting fraud, entered their personal data - a unique number, password and a variable code, necessary for a one-time direction of the order on monetary transactions. This information was stored, processed.

    In addition, as investigators previously reported, in order to obtain new variable codes, cybercriminals called customers or sent SMS messages, appearing to be technical support employees and stating the need to re-enter the variable code, referring to a software failure.

    Having received the identification data, on behalf of clients, hackers sent remote orders to transfer funds from their bank accounts to third party accounts controlled by themselves, after which they cashed money in various ways.

    It took about a year to identify the criminals of the police and the FSB. As noted by the Board of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the successful investigation was helped by the participation of highly qualified specialists of Kaspersky Lab CJSC in it.

    Victims in a criminal case recognized more than 170 citizens from 46 regions of Russia. The damage from the actions of hackers amounted to about 13 million rubles. In order to secure a civil lawsuit, their property was seized.
    The court sentenced Yevgeny and Dmitry Popelyshov to 6 years in prison with a probationary period of 5 years, as well as a fine of 450 thousand rubles each. Alexander Sarbin was sentenced to 4 years probation with a probation period of 4 years and a fine of 200 thousand rubles.

    Also popular now: