A man portrayed as a ringleader in an international cyber scam has pleaded guilty in New York after being arrested in Estonia in 2011.
Vladimir Tšaštšin, an Estonian citizen, entered the plea on June 8th, 2015 in Manhattan federal court.
The plea came in a scheme that authorities said infected more than 4 million computers in over 100 countries with software that disabled anti-virus protections and steered users to websites they did not choose. Sentencing was set for Oct. 14.
Prosecutors say more than a half-million computers were infected in the United States. They included computers belonging to government agencies including NASA. Prosecutors say infected computers also belonged to educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, commercial businesses and individuals.
They said Tšaštšin and co-conspirators profited by receiving payments due to higher Internet traffic after they digitally hijacked Internet searches and re-routed computers to certain websites and advertisements.
Background:
http://krebsonsecurity.com/201...in Estonian:
http://www.delfi.ee/news/paeva...