Three alleged hackers were charged in Manhattan federal court yesterday with distributing a virus that infected more than 1 million computers worldwide, allowing thieves to steal bank data and siphon millions from online accounts.
Prosecutors unsealed criminal charges against Mihai Ionut Paunescu, Deniss Calovskis and Nikita Kuzmin for allegedly creating and distributing the Gozi virus.
Paunescu, a Romanian citizen, is in custody there; Calovskis, a citizen of Latvia, is in custody in that country; and the Russian Kuzmin is in US custody.
At least 40,000 computers in the United State were infected, including more than 160 belonging to NASA, prosecutors said. Gozi also hit computers in Germany, the UK, Poland, France, Finland, Italy and Turkey.
Kuzmin allegedly began designing Gozi in 2005 to steal bank-account information belonging to individuals and businesses. He allegedly rented the virus to criminals from 2006 to 2008 and then sold the source code to co-conspirators in 2009 and 2010 for at least $50,000 a pop.
Kuzmin faces seven criminal charges, including conspiracy, bank fraud and computer intrusion.
Paunescu and Calovskis were charged with providing additional Internet software to aid the scam.