Estonian man gets over 7 years in prison for role in global DNS hijacking botnet

An Estonian man has been sentenced to seven years and three months in prison in the U.S. for his role in a cybercriminal operation that infected over 4 million computers with DNS hijacking malware.

Vladimir Tsastsin, 35, from Tartu, Estonia, was one of the key players in a US$14 million click fraud scheme. He is the sixth individual to be sentenced in the case and has received the longest prison sentence. The sentence was handed down Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

According to the Department of Justice, between 2007 and 2011, Tsastsin and his co-conspirators set up companies that masqueraded as publisher networks and entered into agreements with advertising brokers to display ads on their properties.

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