NASA Nabs Cyber-Criminals!

“These arrests illustrate the level of cooperation needed to confront the growing worldwide threat of cyber crime.  We will continue working with our national and international colleagues to help protect Governments, U.S. agencies like NASA, businesses, and individual users of the Internet from fraud and theft.”---NASA Inspector General Paul Martin


The NASA Office of Inspector General has issued a press release (11-9-11) that describes the role they played in capturing cyber-criminals:


PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, JANICE K. FEDARCYK, the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), and PAUL MARTIN, the Inspector General of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Office of Inspector General (“NASA OIG”), today announced charges against six Estonian nationals and one Russian national for engaging in a massive and sophisticated Internet fraud scheme that infected with malware more than four million computers located in over 100 countries.  Of the computers infected with malware, at least 500,000 were in the United States, including computers belonging to U.S. government agencies, such as NASA; educational institutions; non-profit organizations; commercial businesses; and individuals...

Six of the defendants, VLADIMIR TSASTSIN, 31, TIMUR GERASSIMENKO, 31, DMITRI JEGOROV, 33, VALERI ALEKSEJEV, 31, KONSTANTIN POLTEV, 28, and ANTON IVANOV, 26, all Estonian nationals, were arrested and taken into custody yesterday in Estonia by the Estonian Police and Border Guard Board.  The U.S. Attorney’s Office will seek their extradition to the United States.  The seventh defendant, ANDREY TAAME, 31, a Russian national, remains at large...

NASA Inspector General PAUL MARTIN said:  “These arrests illustrate the level of cooperation needed to confront the growing worldwide threat of cyber crime.  We will continue working with our national and international colleagues to help protect Governments, U.S. agencies like NASA, businesses, and individual users of the Internet from fraud and theft.”...


Mr. BHARARA praised the investigative work of the FBI, NASA OIG, and the Estonian Police and Border Guard Board.  Mr. BHARARA also specially thanked the National High Tech Crime Unit of the Dutch National Police Agency.  The FBI and NASA OIG received assistance from multiple domestic and international private sector partners, including Georgia Tech University, Internet Systems Consortium, Mandiant, National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance, Neustar, Spamhaus, Team Cymru, Trend Micro, University of Alabama at Birmingham and members of an ad hoc group of subject matter experts known as the DNS Changer Working Group (DCG).