A man suspected of running the infamous Bredolab botnet has been arrested in Armenia.The collar of the unnamed 27-year-old suspect at Yerevan Airport on Tuesday follows hours after an operation led by Dutch police resulted in the takedown of 143 command and control servers associated with the information-stealing zombie network.
The malware is reckoned to have infected 30 million computers worldwide, causing undoubtedly huge losses and considerable inconvenience to victims in the process.
Investigators reckon the suspect launched an unsuccessful bid to retake control of the botnet and attack Leaseweb, the web hosting firm used by the hacker, soon after the takedown operation. According to Dutch media reports, the attack was brought to an abrupt stop after it was traced back to three Paris-based servers, whose compromised systems were pulled offline.
Armenian authorities arrested the suspect, who allegedly rented access to the botnet to other cybercrooks and fraudsters, following a tip-off from Dutch investigators.