Citadel (malware)

Not to be confused with Citadel (software).

Citadel is a piece of massively-distributed malware based upon Zeus.^[1] It targets credentials stored in password managers such as Keepass, Password Safe and neXus Personal Security Client.^[2]

By 2017 (it was first identified in 2011)^[3] Citadel had infected about 11 million computers worldwide and had caused over $500 million in losses.^[4]

On March 20, 2017, having been extradited from Norway to the United States, a Russian computer science professional Mark Vartanyan pleaded guilty to a computer fraud charge for his part in developing the Control Panel for Citadel. In July 2017, he was sentenced to 5 years in federal prison.^[5]

See also

• Conficker
• Command and control (malware)
• Gameover ZeuS, the successor to ZeuS
• Operation Tovar
• Timeline of computer viruses and worms
• Tiny Banker Trojan
• Torpig
• Zeus (malware)
• Zombie (computer science)