Woman held over spammer death

According to the Moscow Times a woman suspected to be part of a trio involved in Kushnir's murder, was detained on Monday.

35-year-old Kushnir was beaten to death on the weekend after returning to his Moscow apartment. Police believe the incident occurred when an attempted robbery got out of hand.

Some reports in Russia initially linked Kushnir's death to the anti-spam campaigns waged against him and his company, the American Language Center (ALC). The ALC was well known in Russia for sending an inordinate amount of marketing emails, a popular belief being that every Russian had at one time received a mailing from Kushnir.

"It will be interesting to see how this move will affect spam volumes from Russia in general," said Mikko Hypponen, director of antivirus research at Finnish antivirus company F-Secure. "Other spammers must be scared now."

According to Russian media reports Kushnir was drugged before the attempted robbery, and subsequent beating, took place.

www.f-secure.com