Slavik ran the now defunct Gameover Zeus operation, which saw a vast network of up to 1 million infected machines connected over a peer-to-peer network maintained by Bogachev and his lackeys. The malware was largely used to steal bank logins and disseminate other malicious software. Bogachev's own operations and those of his underground partners resulted in the theft of more than $100 million from global banks. Gameover Zeus hackers were also responsible for the Cryptolocker ransomware that had acquired its users $27 million in ransom payments after infecting and locking up more than 234,000 PCs. Both were shut down in June last year.
In the aftermath of that huge law enforcement operation, analysis of the tools has indicated Slavik or one of his customers was seeking out data about foreign governments that would have been of interest to the Putin regime, says Michael Sandee, principal security expert at Fox -IT, a Dutch digital forensics firm that worked with the FBI on the investigation. In particular, Sandee dug up search commands that looked for files related to foreign intelligence agencies in Georgia, Turkey and Ukraine.