Koshkin Oleg

Biography

2021:4 years in prison in the United States for cybercrime

Russian Oleg Koshkin in the United States received 4 years in prison for managing a service that hides viruses. This was announced on December 9, 2021 by the US Department of Justice.

According to FBI agent David Sodeberg, Koshkin, along with accomplices, "worked for many years to bypass our most basic cybersecurity systems for the distribution of malware on a global scale."

Russian in the United States received 4 years in prison for managing a service that hides viruses

According to the investigation, Koshkin acted in collusion with Peter Levashov, already convicted in the United States, and together they were able to introduce malware in about 200 thousand computers around the world. The latter in July 2021 was sentenced to a prison term of 33 months and payment of $3.5 million in damages.

In particular, Levashov, according to US authorities, was the operator of the Kelihos botnet. According to the US Justice Department, Koshkin provided Levashov with a special encryption service of a large amount of data, which allowed Levashov to distribute Kelihos through several criminal organizations.

According to court documents, Koshkin managed the sites  of crypt4u.com,  fud.bz  and others. On them, he promised to create malware completely undetectable by all large antiviruses. The Russian and his accomplices claimed that his programs could be used  for dabotnets, trojans,  keyloggers, identity theft and cryptocurrency mining.

Koshkin's websites provided important services to cybercriminals, allowing them to hide their malware from antivirus and use it to infect thousands of computers around the world, said Acting US Attorney in Connecticut Leonard Boyle.

Oleg Koshkin was in custody for more than two years at the time of sentencing. Before his detention, the Russian lived in Estonia.^[1]

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