The Armenian judicial system reached a milestone recently, as the jailing of a Russian spam mastermind marks the first time the country has convicted a computer criminal.
Georgiy Avanesov has been jailed for four years after hijacking the PCs of over 30 million people and using them to send out massive quantities of spam emails, as well as doing work for hire.
In 2009 Avanesov started operating a botnet system that became known as Bredolab. He used a wide variety of techniques, including automated attacks and phishing messages to expand the network and gain control of an increasing number of machines.
When the Bredolab botnet was running at its peak, more than three billion junk email messages were being sent out on a daily basis. Georgiy Avanesov, 27, would reportedly reap in revenues of around £80,000 per month though Bredolab by sending out spam and doing work for hire.
But it all began to unravel for him in October 2010 when Dutch police gained control of the Bredolab botnet and started to take it apart to find out who was behind the operation. Avanesov tried to disrupt the investigation by using a web-based attack on the police but his efforts failed, and he was arrested shortly after at Yerevan airport.
