Russia has reportedly hired a man to develop its national payments
system, days after the alleged mastermind of one of the country's
biggest pharmacy spam networks was granted early parole.
The
criminal allegations following Pavel Vrublevsky were prodigious but were
largely denied or unconfirmed by the 35 year-old Moscow native.
His two-and-a-half year sentence handed down in August last year
for hiring a distributed denial of service attack against a Russian
airliner Aeroflot inflicting millions of dollars in damage was slashed
to allow the payments guru to help deploy Russia's new National Payment System, according to journalist Irek Murtazin who has followed the case for national newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
The allegations Vrublevsky was employed to help develop Moscow's ground-up payments system were contained in Murtazin's blog post
(Russian), claiming he was released on the back of a deal 'too good to
refuse', according to unnamed sources close to the alleged agreement.
Prosecutors
said at the time of his arrest Vrublevsky's payments provider Chronopay
shelled out the equivalent of $US20,000 to have the Festi botnet attack
rival firm Assist which prevented it from selling tickets.
A ream
of unconfirmed leaked and classified documents alleged Vrublevsky
maintained close relationships with high-ranking Russian officials, was
involved in the development of malicious anti-virus and masterminded
rogue pharmaceutical company RX-Promotion.
He was appointed in
2008 to a key role in the anti-spam commission within Russia's Ministry
of Communications after which the group targeted and shut down spamming
outfit Spamit operated by former business partner Igor Gusev.
Much of Vrublevsky's business dealings and connections with cybercrime were covered by security journalist Brian Krebs who was set to publish a book detailing the online criminal underground.
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