According to widespread reports, the Koobface Gang, a malicious worm that hijacked hundreds of thousands of Facebook accounts, has been caught.
Sophos has identified Anton Korotchenko, Alexander Koltyshev, Roman Koturbach, Syvatoslav Polinchuk and Stanislav Avdeiko as the perpetrators.
The Koobface botnet, a product of the self-proclaimed 'Ali Baba & 4' or 'Koobface Gang', has been terrorising millions of Internet users since mid-2008 and continues to do so today, despite multiple takedown efforts, according to the security company.
SophosLabs malware expert Dirk Kollberg and independent researcher Jan Droemer worked on a report to undercover the identities of the cyber criminals and their online activities. The report focuses on the suspects behind one of the largest cyber crimes in recent years, and the process of their identification.
According to the IT security firm, Koobface (an anagram of Facebook) spreads via social networking sites, infecting PCs and building a botnet of compromised computers. It is so sophisticated it can even create its own social networking accounts, so that it can aggressively post links, helping it to spread further.
"It's an incredible detective story of tireless investigation, which involved scouring the Internet, searching company records, and taking advantage of schoolboy social networking errors made by the suspected criminals, their friends and family.
“We know the gang [member's] names, their phone numbers, where their office is, what they look like, what cars they drive, even their mobile phone numbers," says Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.
According to research compiled by Infowar Monitor, the Koobface Gang drew revenues of over $2 million a year. The combined earnings were collected from thousands of individual micro-transactions, of a fraction of a penny each, spread across victims in dozens of national jurisdictions.
Each commandeered computer that clicked on an online ad or downloaded a fake anti-virus package generated a cut for the gang. Infowar Monitor researchers claim that without a victim, particularly a complainant, it is almost impossible for a police force to justify the resources to investigate a case like Koobface.
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