Estonian Phishing Suspect Arrested

***
04-Apr-2005

An Estonian man suspected of organising large-scale phishing and pharming operations has been arrested.

***

Last week saw the arrest of an Estonian man accused of plundering millions of pounds from many hundreds of online bank accounts across Europe.

AP news service reports that the 24 year old, as yet unnamed by authorities, allegedly used trojan scripts in order to keylog victims' PCs and log their confidetial online banking passwords as they typed them in.

It appears the scammer has been highly successful with authorities indicating that many millions of pounds have gone missing from online consumers' accounts.

The trojan was emailed en masse to victims in emails which promised lucrative job offers from various institutions. The email in fact linked to a web page which hosted malicious self-installing code.

Certain countries seem to have been particularly hard hit by the scammer - Germany, Britain, Spain and some of the Baltic states. The suspect was arrested in Estonia, where is being currently held and faces up to five years in jail if he is found guilty.

APACS, the British payment clearing services agency has recently revealed that online consumers lost £12m online in 2004 due to malicious code operations which extract confidential online banking information.

MillerSmiles News

04/04/05

Talk about this article on our phishing news discussion forum

---

PRESS/MEDIA ENQUIRIES

MillerSmiles is the web's dedicated anti-phishing service. Launched in 2003, the site has become one of the most trusted internet security related websites on the internet.

For enquiries relating to this story or any other part of the MillerSmiles website please email the MillerSmiles team here

If you are interested in business and partnership opportunities with MillerSmiles please email us here