Alaska News

Alaska agents play key role in taking down a Russian cybercrime kingpin

Alaska federal law enforcement agents and prosecutors played a central role in a newly announced U.S. Justice Department effort to take down the Kelihos botnet, a global network of infected computers under the control of a Russian cybercriminal.

The Kelihos botnet has been a source of criminal activity targeting computer users worldwide since at least 2010, according to the U.S. Justice Department. At times, 100,000 simultaneously infected devices were used to carry out spam attacks, including password thefts and installing ransomware on target devices, the department said.

The man suspected of running the criminal enterprise, a Russian national named Peter Yuryvich Levashov, was arrested in Spain over the weekend.

A criminal case against Levashov by DOJ remains under seal, but on Monday the department announced a civil complaint intended to block spam from the botnet.

The U.S. Attorney's office in Alaska filed the civil complaint, which was the result of investigative work by Anchorage FBI cybercrime agents.

A civil court order signed by an Alaska judge allowed the FBI to neutralize the botnet by cutting off communication between the infected computers and the operator. The FBI's New Haven, Connecticut office was also involved in the effort to dismantle the botnet.

Why the FBI's Anchorage office?

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The office had the staff available and the technical expertise to do it, said Bill Walton, a supervisory special agent with the agency.

Federal prosecutors also had jurisdiction in Alaska because the Kelihos malware infected the computers of hundreds of thousands of people around the globe, including some in Alaska.

"If you've ever opened your email and received 7 million spam emails, you've gotten Kelihos spam," Walton said.

Information from Reuters was used in this report.

Michelle Theriault Boots

Michelle Theriault Boots is a longtime reporter for the Anchorage Daily News. She focuses on in-depth stories about the intersection of public policy and Alaskans' lives. Before joining the ADN in 2012, she worked at daily newspapers up and down the West Coast and earned a master's degree from the University of Oregon.

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