Roughly 20 charged in Eastern Europe with building Carberp banking trojan

Russian authorities have nabbed a gang of about 20 people allegedly behind the Carberp banking trojan, according to a report in the nation's Kommersant paper.

The article (translated) didn't say the ring was responsible for Carberp, but according to a tweet from Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab researcher Aleks Gostev, that is the malware that the suspects helped develop.

Citing the Security Service of Ukraine and the Russian Federal Security Service, the article said the accused fraudsters have been in operation since 2009 and have managed to steal about $250 million from Ukraine and Russian bank accounts alone by funneling the cash into the accounts of so-called "front companies." Accounts in the United States and Canada also have been hit.

Each of the defendants, ranging in age from about 25 to 30, performed a various role in the creation of the trojan, which as recently as December, was fetching $40,000 per kit. They worked remotely, so rarely did anyone know one another as they regularly modified the malware so it would evade anti-virus detection.

Last year, authorities charged a 22-year-old Russian man with using a modified version of Carberp to steal login details and digital signatures from compromised computers.