Alleged Mariposa botnet conspirators seek employment with Panda Security

And when Corrons – who worked with Spanish police for most of last year on the botnet – turned down their request, it seems that someone then turned up on the Twitter microblogging service masquerading as him.

Reporting on the increasingly complex turn of events over the weekend, Brian Krebs, a US IT security expert, said that two men - Netkairo and Ostiator - were arrested in February in connection with the Mariposa (Spanish for butterfly) botnet swarm.

Krebs quoted Corrons as saying that he thought some of his colleagues were playing a practical joke when the pair turned up at Panda's Spanish headquarters with resumes in their hands.

According to Corrons, as is normal under Spanish law, police do not release the names of people who have been arrested until they have been charged, but after assisting the police in their investigation of Mariposa, he recognised their addresses.

Corrons says that the pair started the Mariposa botnet after they were out of work for a while and realised that their hobby was bringing in a few hundred euros a week and "then discovered they couldn't stop."

In his report on the saga, Krebs quotes Corrons as saying that, when it became clear that Panda wasn't interested in hiring him, Netkairo changed his tune, "claiming he had found vulnerabilities in [Panda's] cloud anti-virus software and hinting that he planned to publish the information."

"Later that week, someone opened a blog at Google Blogspot using the account name `NeTK' and posted a video labelled Panda Cloud Antivirus Detection Bypass POC", he added.

In his own security blog posting over the saga, Corrons said that the pair were less than pleased when Panda said it was not interested in hiring the pair and `someone'  tried to pose as him on Twitter.

"My Twitter name is Luis_Corrons, and the fake account was Iuis_Corrons. It started following all of my followers, including myself", he said.

The good news, Infosecurity notes, is that Twitter moved fairly swiftly and suspended the fake account.

"Some people over here say that I should be careful, as Netkairo lives near here and has already visited me twice. But Nerea, my wife, has told me that I don't have to be worried, as she has increased my life insurance policy", said Corrins.

"In a few days I will publish here the original story, so you can know all the details and what kind of guys they are", he added.

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