A Latvian computer code writer who helped create a virus that spread to more than 1 million computers worldwide and corrupted some at NASA might be returning home soon after pleading guilty to a federal charge on Friday.
Deniss Calovskis, soft-spoken and bespectacled, pleaded guilty in Manhattan to conspiring to commit computer intrusion. The 30-year-old hacker faces a likely prison term of between 18 months and two years at a December sentencing, according to the terms of a plea deal with the US government.
Before the plea, he had faced charges that could have carried a prison term of up to 67 years upon conviction.
Calovskis admitted that he was hired to write code for the Gozi virus.
“I knew what I was doing was against the law,” Calovskis told a magistrate judge.
Arrested in Latvia in 2012, he was not extradited to the US until February.
1 MILLION COMPUTERS
Prosecutors said the virus from 2005 to 2012 infected more than 1 million computers worldwide and 40,000 in the US, including 190 at NASA.
Computers were also damaged in Germany, Britain, Poland, France, Finland, Italy, Turkey and elsewhere.
When US Attorney Preet Bharara announced arrests in the case in 2013, he said that it was a “wake-up call to banks and consumers” needing to know that the threat of cybercrime was not going away.
A 25-year-old Russian, Nikita Kuzmin, pleaded guilty to computer intrusion and fraud charges in Manhattan in May 2011, admitting his role in creating the virus.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
CONFIDENCE BOOSTER: ’After parkour ... you dare to do a lot of things that you think only young people can do,’ a 67-year-old parkour enthusiast said In a corner of suburban Singapore, Betty Boon vaults a guardrail, crawls underneath a slide, executes forward shoulder rolls and scales a steep slope, finishing the course to applause. “Good job,” the 69-year-old’s coach cheers. This is “geriatric parkour,” where about 20 retirees learned to tackle a series of relatively demanding exercises, building their agility and enjoying a sense of camaraderie. Boon, an upbeat grandmother, said learning parkour has aided her confidence and independence as she ages. “When you’re weak, you will be dependent on someone,” she said after sweating it out with her parkour classmates in suburban Toa Payoh,
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
RSS