Rustam Rafaelevich Gallyamov

Biography

2025: Arrest on charges of creating the world's largest botnet

In the United States, a Russian was arrested, who is accused of creating the world's largest botnet and causing hundreds of millions of damage. dollars The US Department of Justice has charged citizen Russia Rustam Gallyamov with leading the development and deployment of the malicious software Qakbot, which has infected more than 700,000 computers around the world. This was announced on May 22, 2025 by the US Department of Justice.

Employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation call Gallyamov the largest owner of botnets due to the fact that he managed a large-scale IT infrastructure and helped hacker groups. If proven guilty, he faces up to 25 years in prison.

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Фото: Freepik

Development of the Qakbot malware, also known as Qbot or Pinkslipbot, began in 2008. Initially, Rustam Gallyamov created it as a banking Trojan with self-propagation functions, a keylogger, a bootloader of other malware and a backdoor.

Over time, a permanent development team formed around the project, which also participated in the creation of other types of malicious software. By 2019, Qakbot has become a key IT tool for initial infection in cyberattacks using ransomware viruses.

The program was used by well-known cybercriminal hacker groups to carry out attacks. Among them were the following organizations:

• Conti
• ProLock
• Egregor
• REvil
• RansomExx
• MegaCortex
• Doppelpaymer
• Black Basta
• Cactus

According to investigators, Gallyamov received a share of the ransom for providing access to compromised IT systems. The size of the share varied depending on the terms of cooperation with each of the hacker groups.

Qakbot was used to deliver payloads, allowing attackers to gain control over victims' IT systems. The program helped steal sensitive data and deploy Trojans inside organizations' IT systems.

The malicious software caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to hundreds of organizations around the world. Among the victims were private enterprises, medical institutions and government agencies.^[1]