Accused Kelihos spam botmaster: It wasn't me, Microsoft
The Russian man who Microsoft has accused of being the mastermind behind the Kelihos botnet has taken to his blog to deny the allegations.
"I did not commit this crime, [have] never participated in the management of botnets and any other similar programs and especially not extracted from it any benefit," Andrey Sabelnikov wrote Friday in a translated post on LiveJournal. The entry was directed to Microsoft and Kaspersky Labs, which also reportedly was involved in the takedown of Kelihos.
The 31-year-old, who works as a computer programmer, said he has returned to Russia from the United States, where he was temporarily working, to defend himself. In an amended lawsuit, filed last week in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., Microsoft contends that Russian citizen Andrey Sabelnikov is responsible for operating the Kelihos botnet, a former 41,000-node network of zombie computers that was once capable of sending 3.8 billion spam emails per day.
