The operator of Scan4You, an online counter antivirus product service, has been charged and convicted by US prosecutors.
On Thursday, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) said in a statement[1] that Ruslans Bondars has been convicted after a five-day jury trial.
The 37-year-old Latvian "non-citizen," -- which means a citizen of the former USSR -- who has been living in Riga, the capital of Latvia, was charged on one count of conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and one count of computer intrusion with intent to cause damage and aiding and abetting.
The charges relate to Scan4You, an online service dedicated to cybercriminals and malware developers.
The system could be used to see whether or not a variety of antivirus products would detect malicious code -- which is invaluable for malware developers to ascertain before they release their creations into the wild.
Bondars operated the service from 2009 to at least 2016 and offered Scan4You to hackers in return for a fee.
Scan4You could be used to check a minimum of 35 commercial antivirus engines.
One customer of the service used the service to test malware which was released in order to cause chaos for US retailers. The result was the theft of roughly 40 million credit and debit card numbers, 70 million addresses, phone numbers, and other personally identifiable information (PII) from customers.
(Although law enforcement did not name the retailer in question, it is possible that Target was the victim[2] based on the amount of data stolen).
In addition to this incident, another Scan4You customer apparently used the service while developing Citadel[3], which at its peak, infected approximately