Spanish police arrest masterminds of 'massive' botnet

Spanish police have revealed that they have arrested three men responsible for one of the world's biggest networks of virus-infected computers.

All are Spanish citizens with no criminal records and limited hacking skills.

It is estimated that the so-called Mariposa botnet was made up of nearly 13 million computers in 190 countries.

It included PCs inside more than half of Fortune 1000 companies and more than 40 major banks, investigators said.

The criminals have so far only been identified by their internet names, netkairo, aged 31, johnyloleante, aged 30 and ostiator, 25.

Other arrests may follow, the investigators believe.

The first member of the gang was arrested in early February, when he inadvertently logged into the network without disguising the address of his computer.

His computer linked investigators to two more suspects who were arrested later in the month.

'Limited skills'

The botnet was being monitored and was rendered inactive in December, following a major investigation conducted by the FBI, the Spanish Guardia Civil and security experts around the world.

The network of computers was designed to steal sensitive information, including usernames, passwords, banking credentials and credit card data, from social media sites and other online e-mail services.

One of the arrested men had 800,000 pieces of personal data on his machine.

Some very high profile businesses were targeted.

READ MORE