An undercover operation by Dutch and Russian authorities resulted in the arrest of Georg Avanesov earlier this week. Avanesov had allegedly been running a network of hacked computers around the world, typically referred to as a botnet, for over a decade. According to a source close to law enforcement, the 27-year-old made millions during that time frame.

Read the whole story

Wow. It's really stunning what these people make from sending out viruses to string together botnets.

its pretty amazing how many people have no idea what their computers are doing.

To bad for all the people that were infected by this i feel sorry for them. wish i could make 10k a month jesh

Uh... anyone know how to start a botnet? I could sure use 100k a month.

genius, but wrong way to use his ability

argh... I'm definitely in the wrong line of work. It's sad that more users/businesses aren't securing their computers in order to slow the spread of malware.

hello ...

agree!

too bad, but this seem to be always the case, you have some big potentials, you don't get much attention until you take the wrong path.

cheers!

Dear Readers and message repliers.

I also heard besides this genius mind, that in armenia, I.T experts were the people who invented the Bluetooth that is used on phones and p.c's.
But what is upsetting is that this person may have done the wrong thing to make money, but when you have jackals like american corporations who have basically bribed armenian I.T experts into pocket change rewards for innovation i dont think they would have any other choice, these armenians are extremely intellingent and the american I.T corporations in armenia have a base in that country with armenian IT people working to invent things. all they get is a measly 5k for it, i doubt the bluetooth invention was worth 5k to the genius who invented it while the americans got billions or millions in profit. Isnt this slave labour and bribery ? Yes it is.
thanks for reading, now you are all aware !
Regards
Steven Z.

What a jerk. Must be a smart jerk though.

@Guest/Steven - ??? Pretty sure Swedes invented bluetooth for the Swedish company Ericsson.

This seems to a part of what he made more stuff will come out after the investigation is over.

I still don't know the joy of earning millions of dollars while staring at my computer screen. I guess I'll never know.

But still, I wonder, why these brilliant people couldn't earn their fortune in a legal way. Anyway, at least there'll be some less spam in the world now I guess!!!

It is exhilarating to read this article. If everything is legal in this world, where's the fun in it?! No offense to you dear readers. Just kidding. Of course, I still prefer legal geeky activities just like the facebook.com business. The accidental billionaires. What do you think?

This guy could have had a clean life and also made more money if he was doing something legal. He could have had a very successfull career in the computing industry. Why is it that a lot of these cybercriminals have something to do with russia?

It's too bad these people can't use their inteligence in a beneficial way. But it is amazing that people don't take better care of their computers with AV/firewall/malicious software protection.

Its crazy to think that this person made this much money from viruses. I hope this dude goes to jail a long time.

With all the money being made it's no wonder there's so much cyber-crime. This is probably not too unusual either. Some of the companies making that scareware malware rake in millions and millions.

just shows how fast these criminals operate. this is a showcase on how vulnerable our pc's are. imagine how much money they harvest for doing something unwanted. considering his age im guessing he's a real genius. making millions at that young age is just amazing. he should have put his knowledge to good use

It just goes to show that with a bit of knowledge and no fear of the police you can make tons of money. is it that hard to have a antivirus installed? (and it's painfully clear that for many the answer is yes)