Estonian virus writer sent to jail

Author of Allapple virus sentenced.

An Estonian man has been found guilty of creating and distributing the Allapple virus, and sentenced to a little over two and a half years in prison.

The 44-year-old Artur Boiko pleaded not guilty to the charges, but was convicted based on evidence outlined by the prosecution which indicated that Boiko had released the virus in a revenge attack against an insurance company with which he was in dispute.

As the Allapple family spread across the net it launched a denial of service attack from infected machines against three sites: www.if.ee, www.online.if.ee and www.starman.ee - the first two of these were sites belonging to IF Insurance, the company with which Boiko was in dispute, and the third site was that of Starman, an Estonian ISP.

In addition to the prison sentence, the court ordered Boiko to pay 5.1 million Estonian Kroons (approx. $445,000) to IF Insurance and 1.4 million Estonian krooni (approx. $122,000) to Starman ISP in compensation.

More on the F-Secure blog here and at The Register here.

11 March 2010

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