The Department of Justice has announced that two hackers who built and sold the Trojan called SpyEye, that caused close to $1 billion in banking losses, have been sentenced for a combined 24 1/2 years in federal court in Atlanta, Georgia.

According to evidence presented in Court, provided by the able investigation of the FBI, the Department of Justice and international cyber and digital crimes agencies, SpyEye was the “preeminent malware banking Trojan from 2010-2012, used by a global syndicate of cybercriminals to infect over 50 million computers, causing close to $1 billion in financial harm to individuals and financial institutions around the globe.

The hackers, from Russia and Algeria, designed SpyEye to automate the theft of online banking credentials, credit card information, usernames, passwords, PINs and other personal information. It secretly infected the computers, and allowed the hackers to remotely controlled the computers. Once they got control of the computer, they were able to remotely access the computers without authorization and transmit the personal information and steal money from the accounts.

One of the hackers sent over one million spam emails containing strains of SpyEye and other malware to computers in the U.S. The FBI had reason to believe that a short time after one of the hackers’ arrest, he was planning to release SpyEye 2.0, which “if released, would have been one of the most prolific and undetectable botnets distributed to date…”

Another one for the good guys!

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