The police prevented hackers from stealing about 1 billion rubles from the accounts of the largest Russian banks, stopping the spread of viruses designed to covertly copy access details to the bank accounts of citizens and organizations, the press center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported on Monday .

“Department K received information that malicious software is being posted on the websites of leading banks of the Russian Federation. It was found that the malicious program copies personal data of clients, with the help of which funds were then stolen from clients’ accounts,” the department said in a statement.

As it was established, the author of the virus programs was 42-year-old programmer from Togliatti, Alexander Pakichev. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, having registered under the pseudonym “Chameleon” on several computer websites, Pakichev posted an advertisement for the development of malicious software.

“To hack the websites of each bank, the attacker created personal malicious programs, which he later sold to customers for an average of 9 thousand rubles. Over two years, the attacker wrote more than 10 such programs,” the department said in a statement.

As a result, Pakichev and his accomplices managed to obtain personal data of several tens of thousands of clients of Russian banks, in whose accounts there was a total of about 1 billion rubles, the Ministry of Internal Affairs reports.

In connection with this scam, a criminal case was opened under the article “creation, use and distribution of malicious programs.” The court sentenced Pakichev to 1 year of suspended imprisonment and a fine of 100,000 rubles.

Police prevented hackers from stealing 1 billion rubles from bank accounts