Dimitry Belorossov, also known as Rainerfox, a 22-year-old Russian man, was sentenced to four years and six months in prison for widely distributing and installing a popular banking trojan known as Citadel, as well as for operating a Citadel botnet made up of thousands of machines.

Belorossov plead guilty in 2014 to conspiracy to commit computer fraud. He was also sentenced to three years of supervised release and is ordered to pay $322,409.09 in restitution.

The Citadel bot is designed to capture banking credentials, payment card data and other personal information. Belorossov leveraged the bot to take over 7,000 computers.

He spread the malware by malicious attachments in spam emails and commercial advertisements containing the malware or links to the malware.

Although the bot net affected mostly Russian computer systems, Belorossov was arrested by U.S. law enforcement partners in Spain.

Source: SCMagazine