Russian anti-antivirus security tester pleads guilty to certifying attack code

A Russian coder who ran and franchised a dark web service that optimized malware and checked it against antivirus engines has pled guilty to one charge of conspiracy and one charge of aiding and abetting computer intrusion.

Jurijs Martisevs was arrested while on a trip to Latvia and extradited to the US after the authorities accused him and associate Ruslans Bondars of running the anti-antivirus system. Martisevs has now admitted to this, while Bondars is still awaiting trial.

According to court documents Martisevs set up the service in 2009 and it operated until May 2017. Malware developers could submit their sample to the pair's service and it would check the code against the virus signatures that are used by the world's leading security software suites.