Russian spam master pleads guilty to operating Kelihos botnet

Russian programmer Peter Levashov has pleaded guilty to charges of wire fraud, conspiracy, computer crime and aggravated identity theft before the US District Court in Hartford, Connecticut, the Justice Department said on Wednesday. All charges stem from Levashov’s alleged operation of the Kelihos botnet, which infected an estimated 50,000 computers to “distribute thousands of spam e-mails, harvest login credentials, and install malicious software on computers around the world” for over two decades. Levashov, now 38, was arrested in Spain last year and extradited to the US in February. He is also wanted in Russia on cyber-crime charges.