Igor Alexandrovich Artimovich (born March 24, 1982,

Kaliningrad Oblast Kaliningrad Oblast (russian: Калинингра́дская о́бласть, translit=Kaliningradskaya oblast') is the westernmost federal subject of Russia. It is a semi-exclave situated on the Baltic Sea. The largest city and administr ...

, the

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

, Russian: Игорь Александрович Артимович) is a Russian programmer,

hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term ''hacker'' has become associated in popu ...

, and author of a

botnet A botnet is a group of Internet-connected devices, each of which runs one or more bots. Botnets can be used to perform Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, steal data, send spam, and allow the attacker to access the device and its conn ...

named Festi. He is known under the pseudonym Engel, such writing of the nickname has an origin from the name of a song of the German rock-group

Rammstein Rammstein (, "ramming stone") is a German Neue Deutsche Härte band formed in Berlin in 1994. The band's lineup—consisting of lead vocalist Till Lindemann, lead guitarist Richard Kruspe, rhythm guitarist Paul Landers, bassist Oliver Riedel, ...

Early years

Artimovich was born in Kalinigrad Oblast, the USSR. At the age of 6 months he moved with his parents to

Leningrad Oblast Leningrad Oblast ( rus, Ленинградская область, Leningradskaya oblast’, lʲɪnʲɪnˈgratskəjə ˈobləsʲtʲ, , ) is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject of Russia (an oblast). It was established on 1 August 1927, a ...

, where he lived until the ending of high school. His first experiences in programming were connected to the

Basic BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...

language on the

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as t ...

computer.

Saint-Petersburg State University

In 1999, Artimovich entered the

Saint-Petersburg State University Saint Petersburg State University (SPBU; russian: Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет) is a public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the G ...

at the faculty of Applied Mathematics, and moved to live to

Saint-Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

. In 2004, he finished studying, having defended the thesis and having gained the diploma as "Mathematician".

Sun Microsystems

From 2004, he worked in the Saint-Petersburg branch of

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

, in the development of the C compiler which belonged to a set of development tools of the software named

Sun Studio Sun Studio is a recording studio opened by rock-and-roll pioneer Sam Phillips at 706 Union Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee, on January 3, 1950. It was originally called Memphis Recording Service, sharing the same building with the Sun Records label ...

. Artimovich's duties consisted in porting the compiler of language C on the amd64 platform and realizing of functionality of the compiler specific to the operating system Linux. In 2008, Artimovich left Sun Microsystems. Artimovich, in an interview with ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', told that after leaving Sun Microsystems he was engaged in research in the field of

information security Information security, sometimes shortened to InfoSec, is the practice of protecting information by mitigating information risks. It is part of information risk management. It typically involves preventing or reducing the probability of unauthorize ...

and

computer virus A computer virus is a type of computer program that, when executed, replicates itself by modifying other computer programs and inserting its own code. If this replication succeeds, the affected areas are then said to be "infected" with a compu ...

es, and also the development of his own

antivirus Antivirus software (abbreviated to AV software), also known as anti-malware, is a computer program used to prevent, detect, and remove malware. Antivirus software was originally developed to detect and remove computer viruses, hence the name. ...

software for Windows operating systems.

Cyberattack on Aeroflot

In summer of 2010, a

cyberattack A cyberattack is any offensive maneuver that targets computer information systems, computer networks, infrastructures, or personal computer devices. An attacker is a person or process that attempts to access data, functions, or other restricted ...

similar to a "

distributed denial of service In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connect ...

" was carried out on the electronic ticket payment system of

Aeroflot PJSC AeroflotRussian Airlines (russian: ПАО "Аэрофло́т — Росси́йские авиали́нии", ), commonly known as Aeroflot ( or ; russian: Аэрофлот, , ), is the flag carrier and the largest airline of Russia. The ...

airline. The attack was so strong that the equipment of the backbone provider of the Internet serving payment system couldn't cope with it, and Aeroflot suspended the online sale of tickets for a week. In autumn of 2010, specialists from the anti-virus company ESET conducted research to determine the source of the attack and drew the conclusion that the attack was made with use of the botnet Festi. This cyberattack drew the close attention of Russian intelligence services, and the conclusion was drawn that the founder and the owner of Festi was Artimovich. This was confirmed by American journalist and blogger

Brian Krebs Brian Krebs (born 1972) is an American journalist and investigative reporter. He is best known for his coverage of profit-seeking cybercriminals.Perlroth, Nicole.Reporting From the Web's Underbelly. ''The New York Times''. Retrieved February 28, ...

, who specializes on information security, in an article titled "Who Is the ‘Festi’ Botmaster?", as well as American journalist Andrew Kramer of The New York Times in the article titled "Online Attack Leads to Peek Into Spam Den" and also by the report by ESET antivirus company at the conference "AVAR 2012" in Hangzhou, China, dedicated to Anti-virus Technologies and Corporate Security.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Artimovich, Igor Russian computer programmers Hackers Computer viruses Cyberwarfare 1982 births Living people People from Kaliningrad Oblast