Mariposa Botnet Author, Darkcode Crime Forum Admin Arrested in Germany
A Slovenian man convicted of authoring the destructive and once-prolific Mariposa botnet and running the infamous Darkode cybercrime forum has been arrested in Germany on request from prosecutors in the United States, who’ve recently re-indicted him on related charges.
The Slovenian Press Agency reported today that German police arrested Matjaž “Iserdo” Škorjanc last week, in response to a U.S.-issued international arrest warrant for his extradition.
In December 2013, a Slovenian court sentenced Škorjanc to four years and ten months in prison for creating the malware that powered the ‘Mariposa‘ botnet. Spanish for “Butterfly,” Mariposa was a potent crime machine first spotted in 2008. Very soon after its inception, Mariposa was estimated to have infected more than 1 million hacked computers — making it one of the largest botnets ever created.
