The author of the infamous "Blackhole" exploit kit has been sentenced to seven years in a Russian penal colony, local media report.

Dmitry Fedotov, 29, also known as Paunch, was sentenced 12 April along with six other hackers who received between five-and-a-half and eight years for fraud offences, TASS news reported.

Fedotov was arrested along with a team of Blackhole developers and customers in October 2013 signalling the end of the exploit kit and a major disruption of cybercrime markets.

The combined damage was 25 million Rubles (US$378,365.250), however it is broadly accepted that the Blackhole exploit kit wrought millions of dollars in damage.

The exploit kit was at its peak the most prolific and capable exploit kit in which the authors regularly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy zero day vulnerabilities in systems like Adobe Flash and Java.

KrebsonSecurity reports Blackhole was rented out for up to US$700 a month, and charged US$10,000 a month for the more highly-capable Cool exploit kit. ®

And now for some country music to explain the sub-head.

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