Feds Identify Suspect Behind World's Largest Botnet

The FBI has reportedly identified the man behind the world's largest botnet, which was responsible for nearly 10 billion spam emails per day before it was disabled late last year, according to a recent Smoking Gun report.

Following an exhaustive search, U.S. authorities found evidence that suggests that 23-year-old Russian-born Oleg Nikolaenko was acting as the controller of the famed Mega-D botnet, which was a network of 500,000 infected computers that was liable for about one-third of the world's spam emails.

Over the years, the Mega-D botnet has been linked to hundreds of different email schemes and spamming initiatives. Nikolaenko allegedly leased out the botnet to a variety of scam artists who sent out billions of email offers for fake Rolex watches, counterfeit prescription drugs and herbal remedies that are not approved by federal regulators.

According to the Smoking Gun report, two well-known online scammers -- Jody Smith and Lance Atkinson -- told the FBI about their dealings with Nikolaenko, which in turn allowed authorities to obtain grand jury subpoenas for the suspect's financial records and email accounts. The documents showed that Atkinson paid Nikolaenko $459,000 over a six-month stretch to have access to the botnet.

An FBI affidavit obtained by the news source alleges that Nikolaenko violated the anti-spam law and abetted "violations of the mail and wire fraud statutes."

The Mega-D botnet was apparently disabled late last year by FireEye (News - Alert), a network security company that was able to identify approximately 509,000 computers that were programmed to "become bots seeking direction from the Mega-D command and control computers," according to the same affidavit.

The Federal Trade Commission has received approximately 3 million complaints related to spam messages connected to the Mega-D botnet. The grand jury has yet to charge Nikolaenko with any crime, however he is said to be the focus of their investigation.

Beecher Tuttle is a TMCnet contributor. He has extensive experience writing and editing for print publications and online news websites. He has specialized in a variety of industries, including health care technology, politics and education. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Tammy Wolf