December 21, 2007 -- Russia may soon prosecute the authors of the "Pinch" Trojan, an easy-to-use malicious software program available on the Internet that steals a variety of data.

Nikolay Patrushev, who heads Russia's Federal Security Services, said earlier this week that Pinch's authors had been identified and would be taken to court, according to a blog posting by Russian security vendor Kaspersky Lab.

Kaspersky said the arrest of the Pinch writers, identified as Ermishkin and Farkhutdinov, would be on the same level as the 2005 prosecution of German Sven Jaschan for creating the NetSky and Sasser worms, which caused thousands of infected computers to crash worldwide.

With Pinch, "it's impossible to estimate what financial losses have been caused over the years since this Trojan first saw the light of day," Kaspersky said. Read more...