Alleged Mariposa Botnet Mastermind On Trial

The man believed to have run the massive Mariposa botnet is on trial, more than two years after the malicious network was shut down.

Slovenian Matjažu Škorjancu, who is believed to go by the name of Iserdo on the Internet, appeared in court accused of creating the software used to run Mariposa and selling it to others for as much as  $1300, according to reports.

His former girlfriend, Nusa Čoh, is also facing money laundering charges.

Spanish suspects awaiting trial

At its height Mariposa, the Spanish name for a butterfly, was believed to have infected between 8 and 12 million computers. In July 2010, the FBI worked with the Slovenian Criminal Police to track down a suspect they believed to be Iserdo.

Just months before that, three men in Spain were arrested, believed to be Mariposa operators going by their online noms de guerre Netkairo, Ostiator and Johnyloleante.

According to Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs and one of the researchers heavily involved in the effort to take down Mariposa and its operators, the Spanish men are still awaiting trial.

“I am really happy seeing how legal procedures are going ahead, it is very important to see how years of work of so many people have these results,” Corrons told TechWeekEurope. “In Spain, the guys that were arrested have yet to be judged, but I think that will happen within this year.”

After the arrests, Corrons was tracked down and approached by two men claiming to be Netkairo and Ostiator, who claimed to be the real masterminds of the operation, even though it turned out they only had basic programming skills. They even asked him for a job at PandaLabs.

Law enforcement have laid a number of giant botnets to rest in recent months.  In July, the world’s third-biggest spamming botnet, Grum, was killed off, thanks to a coordinated effort between security researchers.

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