Russian arrested in Spain over US 2016 election ‘hacking’

A Russian computer expert was on Monday remanded in custody in Spain at the request of US authorities on suspicion of his involvement in alleged hacking of the US presidential election campaign in 2016, a legal source has  said.

Piotr Levachov, was arrested on Friday last week in Barcelona, on a US computer crimes warrant, a spokeswoman for Spain's National Court, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with court rules, told the Associated Press.

He has been singled out by the US for extradition in a request which is due to be examined by Spain’s national criminal court, the source told AFP.

Levashov's arrest comes after his wife Maria Levashova told RT he was linked to last year's US election hacking.

RT quoted Maria as saying armed police stormed into their apartment in Barcelona overnight, keeping her and her friend locked in a room for two hours while they quizzed Levashov.

She said when she spoke to her husband on the phone from the police station, he told her he was told he had created a computer virus that was "linked to Trump's election win." 

According to the cybersecurity site KrebsOnSecurity, Levashov was allegedly responsible for "running multiple criminal operations that paid virus writers and spammers to install 'fake antivirus' software" under the alias "Severa."

"There is ample evidence that Severa is the cybercriminal behind the Waledac spam botnet, a spam engine that for several years infected between 70,000 and 90,000 computers and was capable of sending approximately 1.5 billion spam messages a day," the site adds.

Malicious software is routinely shared, reworked and repurposed, meaning that even a computer virus' creator may have little or nothing to do how the virus is eventually used.

AP