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posted by martyb on Friday December 08 2017, @02:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the price-of-freedom-is-eternal-vigilence dept.

The mastermind behind some of the world's biggest and longest-running botnets has been jailed and his vast criminal infrastructure taken down, in part because of a careless operational security blunder that allowed authorities to identify his anonymous online persona.

Officials from the Republic of Belarus reported Monday they detained a participant in the sprawling Andromeda botnet network, which was made up of 464 separate botnets that spread more than 80 distinct malware families since 2011. On Tuesday, researchers with security firm Recorded Future published a blog post that said the participant was a 33-year-old Belarusian named Sergey Jarets.

To most people, Jarets was known only as "Ar3s," the moniker assigned to a highly respected elder in the criminal underground. In online discussions, Ar3s demonstrated expertise in malware development and the reverse-engineering of software. He also acted as a reputable guarantor of deals that were hashed out online. As it turned out, the ICQ number of the figure he used as one of his primary contact methods was registered in several whitehat discussion forums to one Sergey Jaretz.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/mastermind-behind-massive-botnet-tracked-down-by-sloppy-opsec/


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  • (Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Friday December 08 2017, @03:11PM (11 children)

    by nitehawk214 (1304) on Friday December 08 2017, @03:11PM (#607207)

    ICQ still exists?

    It has to be in the same way that AT&T still exists, right? The name was bought by a company and slapped on an existing buisness?

    --
    "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 08 2017, @03:53PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 08 2017, @03:53PM (#607232)

    Actually,
    few months ago I gave it a try and my ancient username still worked. It looks much better than M$ skype, but using it on my own doesn't make much sense.

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Friday December 08 2017, @04:01PM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday December 08 2017, @04:01PM (#607239) Journal

      Your own? You could have befriended the botnet man, maybe got tossed a couple of bitcoins.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Saturday December 09 2017, @01:11AM (2 children)

      by nitehawk214 (1304) on Saturday December 09 2017, @01:11AM (#607537)

      Holy fucking shit. Not only did I remember my uid, but I remembered my password. (And a good thing, since the email I registered with no longer exists.)

      --
      "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
      • (Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Saturday December 09 2017, @01:21AM

        by nitehawk214 (1304) on Saturday December 09 2017, @01:21AM (#607543)

        Double holy fucking shit: It remembers my contact list. But it is all people I used to game with 16 years ago and have had no contact with since then.

        --
        "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by nitehawk214 on Saturday December 09 2017, @01:32AM

        by nitehawk214 (1304) on Saturday December 09 2017, @01:32AM (#607547)

        And, just like Jarets, it had my real name in the profile. Ahh, the internet of 1997 was such an innocent time.

        --
        "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
  • (Score: 2) by looorg on Friday December 08 2017, @04:15PM (1 child)

    by looorg (578) on Friday December 08 2017, @04:15PM (#607248)

    I assume there is a small core of users left, sort of like for almost all old technology. ICQ used to be great tho, it probably still is. It just sort of got replaced by other things. It didn't become bad or anything.

    http://www.miranda-im.org/ [miranda-im.org]
    I see that my preferred client is still around and kicking.

    https://www.miranda-ng.org/en/downloads/ [miranda-ng.org]
    it's even forked apparently. looking at the language support one would assume it's fairly popular in eastern Europe.

    Miranda was always interesting since it supported so many different chat protocols all in one. I guess it just sort of faded out of existence as more and more people/friends stopped using it and I guess now we just message each other on our phones instead.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 08 2017, @09:05PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 08 2017, @09:05PM (#607423)

      Bah, I don't need that new-fangled stuff.

      Just give me UUNet on CompuServe and I'm fine.

      My 14.4 Rockwell modem still works, too.

  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Friday December 08 2017, @11:04PM

    by frojack (1554) on Friday December 08 2017, @11:04PM (#607495) Journal

    ICQ is an instant messaging client that was first developed and popularized by the Israeli company Mirabilis in 1996. The name ICQ derives from the English phrase "I Seek You".[1] Ownership of ICQ passed from Mirabilis to AOL in 1998, and from AOL to Mail.Ru Group in 2010.

    Or so says wiki.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 08 2017, @11:04PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 08 2017, @11:04PM (#607496)

    It is now owned by some eastern bloc company, I forget who. The most interesting aspect is almost everyone's accounts dating back to the beginning are still there.

    I verified by logging in with my old accounts from the 90s a few years back and they *ALL* still worked.

  • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Saturday December 09 2017, @12:10AM (1 child)

    by JNCF (4317) on Saturday December 09 2017, @12:10AM (#607521) Journal

    Holy the phone, Batman!