This article is more than 1 year old

Microsoft's Kelihos kingpin suspect: It wasn't me

Sabelnikov denies botnet herder allegation

The Russian man named by Microsoft as the mastermind behind the Kelihos botnet has stepped forward to plead his innocence.

Microsoft filed suit in the US last week accusing Andrey Sabelnikov, of St Petersburg, of writing the Kelihos botnet agent and maintaining the network of zombie machines created using the malware to send billions of spam messages. At its peak, the Kelihos botnet included a legion of 41,000 infected machines capable of spewing out 3.8 billion spam emails per day. The network was effectively decapitated by a Microsoft-led takedown operation targeting command & control nodes last September.

Sabelnikov, a former employee of Russian security software firm Agnitum, stepped forward late last week to insist he is "absolutely not guilty [and has] never been involved in handling botnets or any other similar programs". Sabelnikov told the BBC he was "surprised and shocked" at the accusation, adding: "I will prove my innocence."

Microsoft is standing by its accusation that "Sabelnikov wrote the code for and either created, or participated in creating, the Kelihos malware". In addition, the software giant accuses the Russian of "using the malware to control, operate, maintain and grow the Kelihos botnet".

More specifically the lawsuit alleges that Sabelnikov registered more than 3,700 "cz.cc" subdomains from Czech firm dotFREE Group before using these subdomains to operate and control the Kelihos botnet.

A personal blog post by Sabelnikov denying any involvement in the Kelihos botnet operation can be found here (in Russian). ®

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