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January 29, 2012

Kelihos suspect refutes Microsoft allegations

Redmond-based company says it has concrete evidence of Sabelnikov's involvement

By CBR Staff Writer

Andrey Sabelnikov has denied accusations of creating the Kelihos software which had infected thousands of machines.

In an interaction with BBC, he said he was shocked to learn about the accusations and added that he would ultimately prove his innocence

Sabelnikov earleir claimed to have worked at Agnitum, a Russian anti-virus firm between 2005 and 2008, with a company official confirming the report today.

He said in a blog psot that his creditworthiness and reputation with former and current employers as well as the associated companies had been unjustly damaged, and that he is absolutely ‘not guilty’.

Kelihos grew to a network of 41,000 compromised computers tied together by several ‘masters’ with each ‘bot’ representing a terminal used for malicious purposes.

As a part of MARS (Microsoft Active Response for Security), the company disabled the botnet in September, and around that time, it named defendants behind the "cz.cc" domains for infiltrating computers.

Microsoft investigators said they had proof Sabelnikov used malware to control, operate and grow the Kelihos botnet.

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