Malware generated $350,000, developer to repay $200,000

Jun 24, 2015 13:29 GMT  ·  By

After pleading guilty in February to distributing malicious software known as Blackshades Remote Access Tool (RAT), the owner of the network was sentenced this week to 57 months of prison.

Blackshades made a lot of waves last year when Europol raided 300 houses and arrested 81 people for alleged distribution and development of the malware. In mid-2012, reports came in that the tool was used to spy on Syrian activists.

Blackshades includes DDoS functionality

Alex Yucel (Swedish national), one of the Blackshades developers and owner of the distribution network, made the malware available starting 2010 for prices between $40 / €35 and $100 / €88.

It is believed that the tool generated sales of more than $350,000 / €312,000 between September 2010 and April 2014. The product was promoted on hacker forums and orders were taken on a website maintained by Blackshades.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said that Yucel was responsible for creating, marketing and selling the malicious software “that was designed to accomplish just one thing - gain control of a computer, and with it, a victim’s identity and other important information. This malware victimized thousands of people across the globe and invaded their lives.”

The RAT could also be used for recording user activities by storing and sending to the attacker keystrokes and even enabling a connected webcam without the user’s knowledge.

Additionally, it featured distributed denial-of-service capabilities and allowed cybercriminals to further distribute it to the friends of the victim via links sent through instant messaging services.

Yucel's partner still awaits his sentence

Yucel was arrested in Moldova in November 2013 and is the first person to be extradited from this country to the United States.

Apart from the prison sentence, he received 3 years of supervised release and was ordered to pay $200,000 / €179,000 and provide the computer equipment used for the operation.

The other developer of Blackshades is Michael Hogue, who pled guilty to charges in January 2013. He is currently awaiting a sentence.