Author of cryptor for Kelihos botnet sentenced to two years in prison

The US Department of Justice reports that 41-year-old Russian citizen Oleg Koshkin was sentenced to two years in prison for working to create a cryptor that was used to “hide” the Kelihos botnet and other malware from antivirus software.

Let me remind you that Koshkin was arrested in California back in 2019 and has been in custody since then. In the summer of this year, he was found guilty of creating a cryptor for malware, which, in particular, was used by the aforementioned Kelihos botnet to hide payloads and evade detection.

According to the investigation, Koshkin managed the websites as Crypt4U.com, Crypt4U.net, fud.bz, fud.re, and so on, which promised to process any malware (botnets, remote access Trojans, keyloggers, info-stealers, miners) in such a way that almost no one could not detect it, and anti-virus products “did not notice” it.

Investigators have previously noted that Koshkin provided an “important service” that allowed other cybercriminals to infect thousands of computers around the world.

Koshkin was detained shortly after the arrest of Pyotr Levashov, the operator of the Kelihos botnet, who lived in Estonia. Levashov was arrested in Barcelona and then extradited to the United States, where he pleaded guilty.

Levashov was recently sentenced to 33 months in prison and three years under supervision after his release. Since Levashov was arrested in Spain back in 2017 and has been in custody since then, he has already served his term.

Law enforcement officers write that Levashov used the cryptor from 2014 to 2017 (up to his arrest) and paid Koshkin about $ 3,000 a month for services. It is emphasized that in the last four months alone, Kelihos managed to infect about 200,000 computers around the world.

Let me remind you that we also talked about the fact that John McAfee found dead in a Spanish prison.