Penchukov, known as “Tank,” rose to prominence in the late 2000s as the leader of the Zeus botnet, which stole financial information such as bank account information and PIN codes from victims. This led to unauthorized transfers and multimillion-dollar losses. He was on the FBI’s Most Wanted Cybercriminals list for almost a decade before his arrest in Switzerland in 2022.
While the FBI took down Zeus in 2014, Penchukov was not satisfied and moved on to another banking malware, IcedID, in 2018. The malware eventually evolved into a ransomware tool, as demonstrated by the 2020 attack on the University of Vermont Medical Center that resulted in severe outages and $30 million in losses.
Penchukov’s extradition to the United States and his subsequent guilty plea dealt a serious blow to cybercrime operations.
Source: Ferra
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