MOSCOW, August 1 - RAPSI. On Wednesday, the Moscow City Court remanded the 2010 criminal case of the DDoS attack on Aeroflot's website to the Tushinsky District Court for review, the court spokesperson told the Russian Legal Information Agency.
The court did so in response to a complaint filed by the prosecutor's office.
The Tushinsky District Court had decided to return the case to the Prosecutor General's Office to have its omissions rectified, but the prosecutors disagreed and challenged the decision in the higher court.
Hacker attack charges were brought against Pavel Vrublevsky and Maxim Permyakov, as well as Igor and Dmitry Artimovich, for organizing the DDoS attack on Aeroflot's website, which is run by the Assist processing company. Aeroflot's online ticket sales system was down for several days.
Investigators concluded that Vrublevsky, ChronoPay's CEO, decided in July 2010 to terminate a contract on rendering services to sell e-tickets between Aeroflot and Assist, thus eliminating a rival firm.
According to the Prosecutor General's Office, Vrublevsky ordered the Artimovich brothers to conduct a hacker attack on Aeroflot's website through Permyakov. The brothers operated a network of virus-infected computers. Vrublevsky paid them over $20,000.
The Artimovich brothers attacked the website from July 15 to July 24, blocking the e-ticket payment and acquisition system. The firms incurred substantial financial losses. Assist's damages amounted to 15 million rubles ($465,200). Aeroflot's exceeded 146 million rubles ($4.5 million).