Ukraine Arrests ‘Avalanche’ Cybercrime Organizer: Police

Ukraine has detained one of the organizers of the massive Avalanche cybercrime network, police said on Monday, over a year after the global ring was busted in an international raid.

“An organizer of the international crime platform known as ‘Avalanche’ which infected up to half a million computers in the world daily was detained in Kiev Sunday,” Ukraine’s cyber police said in a statement.

Avalanche was a criminal network providing infrastructure for malware and DDoS (distributed denial of service) spam attacks across the world before it was busted in an unprecedented global sting operation.

Speaking to AFP, a cyber police spokeswoman confirmed the arrested man was Gennadiy Kapkanov, a Ukrainian citizen who was using a passport with a different identity.

Police also searched his rented flat, seizing a laptop and memory storage devices, it said.

In November 2016, police from more than 25 countries smashed the network and arrested its top bosses following a four-year operation.

Hundreds of servers were shut down or seized and 800,000 internet domains were blocked, Europol said at the time, in one of the biggest takedowns to date.

During the operation, Kapkanov was also detained in the sting at his home in Poltava, a city in central Ukraine, but the local court did not formally arrest him and he disappeared, Ukrainian media said.

Later on Monday, the same court will have to rule again on whether to formally place Kapkanov under arrest.