Igor Artimovich

Igor Artimovich (March 24, 1982, Kaliningrad Oblast, the USSR, Russian: Игорь Артимович) — Russian programmer, hacker, the author of one of the largest botnets named Festi.^[1][2][3] He is known under the pseudonym Engel, such writing of the nickname has an origin from the name of a song of the German rock-group Rammstein.

Early Years

It is known a little about early years of Igor. He was born in Kalinigrad Oblast, the USSR, and at the age of 6 months with his parents he moved to Leningrad Oblast, the USSR, where he lived before the ending of high school. The first experiences in programming are connected with the Basic language and the ZX Spectrum computer.

Saint-Petersburg State University

In 1999 Igor entered the Saint-Petersburg State University at the faculty of Applied Mathematics, and moved to live to Saint-Petersburg. In 2004 he finished studying, having defended the thesis and having gained the diploma as "Mathematician".

Sun Microsystems

Since 2004 he worked in the Saint-Petersburg branch of the Sun Microsystems company in the department of development of the C compiler which was belonged to a set of development tools of the software named Sun Studio. Igor's working duties consisted in porting of the compiler of language C on the amd64 platform and realization of functionality of the compiler specific to the operating system Linux. In 2008 Igor left Sun Microsystems, but didn't go to work to the Oracle company which carried on negotiations on acquisition of business of Sun Microsystems company.

Igor, in the interview given to The New York Times,^[3] told that after his withdrawal from Sun Microsystems he closely was engaged in researches in the field of information security and computer viruses, and also development of his own antivirus for operating systems of Windows family, and on this soil he got acquainted with Pavel Vrublevsky, Russian businessman and financier.

Cyberattack on "Aeroflot" Airline

In summer of 2010 on the payment system serving sale of electronic tickets of "Aeroflot" airline cyberattack like "distributed denial of service" was carried out. The capacity of attack was so high that the equipment of the backbone provider of the Internet serving payment system didn't cope with it. Online sale of tickets of "Aeroflot" airline was suspended for a week.

In autumn of 2010 specialists of the anti-virus company ESET conducted research of sources of attack and drew a conclusion that attack was made with use of botnet Festi. This cyberattack drew close attention of Russian intelligence services, and as a result of expeditious development the conclusion was drown that the founder and the owner of botnet Festi is Igor Artimovich. This conclusion is confirmed by American journalist and blogger Brian Krebs specializing on information security, in the article under the name "Who Is the ‘Festi’ Botmaster?",^[2] American journalist Andrew Kramer of The New York Time newspaper in the article under the name "Online Attack Leads to Peek Into Spam Den"^[3] and also by the report of specialists of ESET antivirus company at the conference "AVAR 2012" in Hang Zhou, Chine dedicated to Anti-virus Technologies and Corporate Security.^[1]

In summer of 2011 Igor Artimovich was arrested by the staff of Russian intelligence services on suspicion in participation in cyberattack on online resources of "Aeroflot" airline, and 2 months later he was released. In summer of 2013 at the end of judicial proceedings on the case of cyberattack on "Aeroflot" airline Igor Artimovich was arrested by the court, but in 4 months at the reconsideration of the case he was released by the court of appeal instance.

Current Time

Nowadays Igor Artimovich lives in Saint-Petersburg, Russia, and works under the projects connected with informational security.

References