Security News > 2022 > November > Google Wins Lawsuit Against Russians Linked to Blockchain-based Glupteba Botnet

Google has won a lawsuit filed against two Russian nationals in connection with the operation of a botnet called Glupteba, the company said last week.

The defendants' move to press sanctions against Google was denied.

The development comes nearly a year after the tech giant took down the malware's command-and-control infrastructure and initiated legal proceedings against Dmitry Starovikov and Alexander Filippov, who are said to have been in charge of running the illegal botnet.

Per Google, the botnet approximately infected more than one million Windows computers worldwide.

A settlement demand made on September 8 shows that the actors asked $1 million each from Google, in addition to $110,000 in attorney's fees, in exchange for providing the private keys for Bitcoin addresses associated with the Glupteba botnet.

"It is now clear that the defendants appeared in this Court not to proceed in good faith to defend against Google's claims but with the intent to abuse the court system and discovery rules to reap a profit from Google," District Judge Denise L. Cote said.

News URL

https://thehackernews.com/2022/11/google-wins-lawsuit-against-russians.html