Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2011/06/02/rustock_suspect_digital_trail/

Rustock botnet suspect fancies job at Google

Circumstantial evidence points to aspirational cv

By John Leyden

Posted in Security, 2nd June 2011 21:23 GMT

A Rustock botnet suspect has aspirations to work at Google, according to a nice piece of cyber-sleuthing by ex-Washington Post reporter Brian Krebs.

Microsoft dismantled the command and control structure of the notorious spam-distributing Rustock botnet back in March. Redmond has since discovered that a Webmoney account used to rent Rustock control servers was linked to an individual called Vladimir Alexandrovich Shergin.

Another man, Dmitri A. Sergeev, who may use the online handle Cosma2k, was also named as a person of interest in papers filed by Microsoft in federal court in Seattle. The person using the identity Cosma2k rented command and control servers used by Rustock. Microsoft plans to hire advertising space in Moscow and St Petersburg newspapers in a bid to put a definite name and location to its suspects.

Vladimir Shergin also appears in a leaked database of top earning affiliates of notorious pharmacy spamming operation Spamit.com. The same database, obtained by Krebs last year, ties the identity Cosma2K to an account ger-mes@ger-mes.ru

The ger-mes.ru website is no longer available but when Krebs checked the site last August it included a CV for one Dmitr A Sergeev who said in his cirriculum “I want to work in Google”.

Krebs has passed on the details of the Belarusian-educated software engineer to both Google and Microsoft but has yet to hear back from either firm. Pending a reply from Google it's unclear whether or not Sergeev even applied for a job with Google.

A full write-up of the cyber-sleuthing can be found in a report by Krebs on Security here. ®