A Russian man who helped create a hacking tool capable of extracting funds from victims’ bank accounts will spend four years behind bars, a punishment that fell short of the five years for which federal prosecutors had asked.
A judge in the U.S. Southern District of New York handed down the 48-month prison sentence, including time served, to Stanislav Lisov for his role in deploying the NeverQuest malware. Lisov admitted he profited $885,000 from NeverQuest, while government investigators said the hacking technique had been used to try to steal a total of $4.4 million from international banks.
Five years would have been the maximum allowed under the terms of a plea deal Lisov struck with the Department of Justice early this year.
“He is happy,” Lisov’s attorney, Arkady Bukh, told CyberScoop, calling the sentence a “great victory.”
NeverQuest quickly became a favorite hacking tool for financial scammers after its debut in 2013. Thieves would infect victims via social media, phishing emails or file transfers, wait for them to access a banking site, and then capture the credentials. Hackers also maintained a database of financial websites, allowing them to automatically capture any data a victim entered into their bank’s site.
“Once surreptitiously installed, NeverQuest enables its administrators remotely to control a victim’s computer and log into the victim’s online banking or financial accounts, transfer money to other accounts, change login credentials, write online checks, and purchase goods from online vendo ..
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