Federal authorities charged three Eastern European men with using a computer virus, nicknamed Gozi, that surreptitiously infected over a million computers worldwide, including at NASA, to steal what prosecutors said was at least tens of millions of dollars from personal bank accounts.
The Justice Department unsealed indictments on Wednesday morning in Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York. The case highlights the multinational criminal networks that develop and rent out computer malware. In this case, a Russian national, Nikita Kuzmin, is accused of developing the virus. Dennis Calovskis of Latvia is accused of modifying it so it could mimic a bank’s Web page, prompting account holders to divulge their personal information. Ionut Paunescu of Romania is accused of hosting command and control servers, shielding them to evade detection.
Federal law enforcement officers arrested Mr. Kuzmin as he visited California in 2010 and persuaded him to cooprate. He helped prosecutors nab the other two men, who were arrested in late 2012 in their home countries and are awaiting extradition.
Most of the infected computers were in Europe. Federal law enforcement officials said that although NASA computers were among the 25,000 devices infected inside the United States, they did not believe sensitive strategic information was stolen. The criminal network was motivated by commercial gain, officials said.
