US dismantles Kelihos botnet after Russian hacker’s arrest

The arrest last week of a Russian man in Spain was apparently for his role in a massive spam botnet and not related to an ongoing investigation into foreign tampering with last year’s U.S. election.

The botnet, called Kelihos, has enslaved hundreds of thousands of computers, and distributed spam and malware to users across the globe. However, the U.S. has taken action to dismantle the illegal operation, the Department of Justice said on Monday.

The arrest of 36-year-old Peter Yuryevich Levashov, the botnet’s alleged operator, was at first thought to be related to the ongoing U.S. investigation of presidential election-related hacking, but the DOJ said on Monday that wasn’t the case.

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