Computer virus \’mastermind\’ arrested in Armenia

Agence France-Presse reports that Dutch authorities announced Tuesday the arrest in Armenia of the alleged mastermind behind a computer virus crime group whose server network was dismantled in the Netherlands a day earlier.

“At the request of the national (Dutch) prosecution service, a 27-year-old Armenian believed to be the brains behind the notorious Bredolab network, was arrested at the Yerevan international airport last night,” the prosecution service said in a statement in The Hague.

Investigators said they dismantled a criminal network on Monday that had used computer servers in the Netherlands to infect at least 30 million computers worldwide with a virus that allows others to obtain information like bank passwords from infected computers.

The network was capable of infecting three million computers a month and was sending an estimated 3.6 billion virus e-mails to users daily by the end of 2009.

A total of 143 computer servers were disconnected in the Netherlands on Monday, the prosecuting service said.

Since the Netherlands have no extradition agreement with Armenia, “we are discussing the possibility of the suspect being put on trial there”, prosecution spokesman Wim de Bruin told AFP.