Monday, April 10, 2017

Peter Severa and Pyotr Levashov

**************************

The nature of kingship in William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth follows the events that occur during Macbeth’s unlawful rise to the throne......The themes of greed, arrogance and excessive political ambition are still, very relevant to the world today. Shakespeare got it right - his story of Macbeth still applies to today's world....

**************************

Click Here to view the Index

**************************

April 10, 2017.....Spanish police have arrested a Russian programmer for alleged involvement in "hacking" the US election.....Pyotr Levashov, arrested on 7 April in Barcelona, has now been remanded in custody....Mr Levashov was the subject of an extradition request by the US.....El Confidencial, a Spanish news website, has said that Mr Levashov's arrest warrant was issued by US authorities over suspected "hacking" that helped Donald Trump's campaign...Mr Levashov's wife Maria also told Russian broadcaster RT that the arrest was made in connection with such allegations......Several cybersecurity experts, including Brian Krebs, have also linked Mr Levashov to a Russian spam kingpin, who uses the alias Peter Severa......A US intelligence report released in January alleged that Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to help Mr Trump to victory....Mr Trump later commented that the outcome of the election had not been affected.....The report said that Russia's objectives were to "undermine public faith" in the US democratic process and "denigrate" Mr Trump's Democrat rival Hillary Clinton.....Russia's efforts to this end allegedly included hacking into email accounts used by the Democratic National Committee; using intermediaries such as WikiLeaks to release hacked information; and funding social media users or "trolls" to make nasty comments.....However, there were no details of Mr Putin's alleged involvement with such interference in the report.....Mr Putin has strongly denied allegations that Russia tried to influence the US election."

Alleged Spam King Pyotr Levashov Arrested.....Authorities in Spain have arrested a Russian computer programmer thought to be one of the world’s most notorious spam kingpins......Spanish police arrested Pyotr Levashov under an international warrant executed in the city of Barcelona, according to Reuters. Russian state-run television station RT (formerly Russia Today) reported that Levashov was arrested while vacationing in Spain with his family....According to numerous stories here at KrebsOnSecurity, Levashov was better known as “Severa,” the hacker moniker used by a pivotal figure in many Russian-language cybercrime forums. Severa was the moderator for the spam subsection of multiple online communities, and in this role served as the virtual linchpin connecting virus writers with huge spam networks — including some that Severa allegedly created and sold himself.....Levashov is currently listed as #7 in the the world’s Top 10 Worst Spammers list maintained by anti-spam group Spamhaus. The U.S. Justice Department maintains that Severa was the Russian partner of Alan Ralsky, a convicted American spammer who specialized in “pump-and-dump” spam schemes designed to artificially inflate the value of penny stocks.....Levashov allegedly went by the aliases Peter Severa and Peter of the North (Pyotr is the Russian form of Peter). My reporting indicates that — in addition to spamming activities — Severa was responsible for running multiple criminal operations that paid virus writers and spammers to install “fake antivirus” software. So-called “fake AV” uses malware and/or programming tricks to bombard the victim with misleading alerts about security threats, hijacking the PC until its owner either pays for a license to the bogus security software or figures out how to remove the invasive program.

The New York Times reports that Russian news media did not say if Levashov was suspected of being involved in that activity. However, The Times piece observes that the Kelihos botnet does have a historic association with election meddling

**************************

No comments:

Post a Comment