Facebook outs cyber crooks

Facebook have undertaken an interesting exercise - and an unprecedented one for them - in identifying a gang of 5 Russian cyber criminals that they claim are responsible for the launching of the Koobface worm which compromised the PCs of thousands of users of the social networking behemoth.

Facebook claim that they have known the identities of the men since as long ago as 2008 and have even "had a picture of one of the guys in a scuba mask on our wall" since then according to the company's investigations manager Ryan McGeehan.

The company's chief security officer Joe Sullivan added that they have taken the step of naming the individuals out of frustration at the lack of action taken against them by Russian authorities:

"People who engage in this type of stuff need to know that their name and real identity are going to come out eventually and they're going to get arrested and they're going to be targeted."

It is now going to be interesting to see if the Russian authorities do take action against the men, who are at large and not known to be under any investigation.

It is estimated that Koobface earned the gang as much as USD$2m as a result of the running of as many as 800,000 botnetted computers.