The Untold History of Today's Russian-Speaking Hackers (ft.com) 22
Monday sees the release of "The Billion Dollar Heist," a documentary about the theft of $81 million from the Bangladesh Bank, considered the biggest cyber-heist of all time. The film's executive producer wrote the book Dark Market: How Hackers Became the New Mafia (and is also a rector at the Institute for Human Sciences).
But he's also written an article for the Financial Times outlining the complicated background of Russian-speaking hacker gangs responsible for malware and ransomware, starting with "one of the most remarkable if little-known events in post-cold war history: the first and, to my knowledge, the last publicly organised conference of avowed criminals" in May, 2002.
The First Worldwide Carders Conference was the brainchild of the administrators of a landmark website, carderplanet.com. Known as "the family", this was a mixed group of young men, both Ukrainians and Russians, who had spent the previous 10 years growing up in a lively atmosphere of gangster capitalism. During the 1990s, conventional law and order in the former Soviet Union had broken down. The collapse of the communist system had left a vacuum in which new forms of economic activity were emerging...
Founded a year before the conference, CarderPlanet revolutionised web-based criminal activity, especially the lucrative trade in stolen or cloned credit card data, by solving the conundrum that until then had faced every bad guy on the web: how can I do business with this person, as I know he's a criminal, so he must be untrustworthy by definition? To obviate the problem, the CarderPlanet administrators created an escrow system for criminals. They would act as guarantor of any criminal sale of credit and debit card data — a disinterested party mediating between the vendor and the purchaser... The escrow system led to an explosion of credit card crime around the world in which many criminal fortunes were made....
Roman Stepanenko Vega, a Russian-speaking Ukrainian national who was one of the founders and administrators of CarderPlanet, explained to me how "two days before the conference's opening, we received a visit from an FSB [Federal Security Service] officer in Moscow. He explained that Moscow had no objections to us cloning credit cards or defrauding banks in Europe and the United States but anywhere within the CIS was off limits." In addition, the FSB officer let CarderPlanet know that if the Russian state ever required assistance from criminal gangs, it would be expected to co-operate...
Members of criminal gangs were later recruited into notorious state-backed hacking teams such as Advanced Persistent Threat 28.
A 2021 ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline brought warnings of a U.S. counterattack, the article notes, after which "Russian police started arresting and imprisoning cyber criminal groups." Ransomware attacks now seem particularly focused on Europe, and "According to cyber-security experts, the Russian government is giving these criminal groups information on potential targets." But once more the hackers have been careful not to cross what the Americans consider red lines, as advised, presumably, by Russia's security services. Russia is probably confident that disrupting European businesses will be unlikely to provoke a cyber attack. But the U.S. — whether its government, municipalities or police — remains strictly off-limits.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Geoffrey.landis for sharing the article.
But he's also written an article for the Financial Times outlining the complicated background of Russian-speaking hacker gangs responsible for malware and ransomware, starting with "one of the most remarkable if little-known events in post-cold war history: the first and, to my knowledge, the last publicly organised conference of avowed criminals" in May, 2002.
The First Worldwide Carders Conference was the brainchild of the administrators of a landmark website, carderplanet.com. Known as "the family", this was a mixed group of young men, both Ukrainians and Russians, who had spent the previous 10 years growing up in a lively atmosphere of gangster capitalism. During the 1990s, conventional law and order in the former Soviet Union had broken down. The collapse of the communist system had left a vacuum in which new forms of economic activity were emerging...
Founded a year before the conference, CarderPlanet revolutionised web-based criminal activity, especially the lucrative trade in stolen or cloned credit card data, by solving the conundrum that until then had faced every bad guy on the web: how can I do business with this person, as I know he's a criminal, so he must be untrustworthy by definition? To obviate the problem, the CarderPlanet administrators created an escrow system for criminals. They would act as guarantor of any criminal sale of credit and debit card data — a disinterested party mediating between the vendor and the purchaser... The escrow system led to an explosion of credit card crime around the world in which many criminal fortunes were made....
Roman Stepanenko Vega, a Russian-speaking Ukrainian national who was one of the founders and administrators of CarderPlanet, explained to me how "two days before the conference's opening, we received a visit from an FSB [Federal Security Service] officer in Moscow. He explained that Moscow had no objections to us cloning credit cards or defrauding banks in Europe and the United States but anywhere within the CIS was off limits." In addition, the FSB officer let CarderPlanet know that if the Russian state ever required assistance from criminal gangs, it would be expected to co-operate...
Members of criminal gangs were later recruited into notorious state-backed hacking teams such as Advanced Persistent Threat 28.
A 2021 ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline brought warnings of a U.S. counterattack, the article notes, after which "Russian police started arresting and imprisoning cyber criminal groups." Ransomware attacks now seem particularly focused on Europe, and "According to cyber-security experts, the Russian government is giving these criminal groups information on potential targets." But once more the hackers have been careful not to cross what the Americans consider red lines, as advised, presumably, by Russia's security services. Russia is probably confident that disrupting European businesses will be unlikely to provoke a cyber attack. But the U.S. — whether its government, municipalities or police — remains strictly off-limits.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Geoffrey.landis for sharing the article.
Retaliation (Score:2, Interesting)
If this is the case, who’s been (Score:5, Insightful)
Paywalled on FT. Use this link: (Score:5, Informative)
Anti-authoritarian history of Russian hackers (Score:5, Interesting)
To someone who grew up under an authoritarian regime, using your skill to outsmart a government or a big corporation is an ultimate high. There are a number of contradictions, like if you grew up under socialism you may not have much genuine respect for private property, especially less intuitive intellectual property, and at the same time learning about all the abuses and corruption of USSR makes you despise any super powerful entities.
Of course, someone working for Putin and targeting a children's hospital today can hardly claim to be standing up to power. I think the best examples of anti-authoritarian tradition are revelations of Snowden or say someone hacking DRM to help people control devices they own fair and square. These folks get a pass in my book, and they are not doing these things to enrich themselves. But, it appears that such tradition has largely died out in Russia itself. Someone exposing Putin and his cronies would be super cool though.
Re:Anti-authoritarian history of Russian hackers (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone exposing Putin and his cronies would be super cool though.
There is a whole network of very courageous people who support Alexey Navalny, doing super cool things.
Re: (Score:2)
People who actually grew up in the USSR are over 50 years old nowadays. Whatever anti-authoritarian streak they had is long gone - putin's support base consists of mostly people over 50.
Re: (Score:2)
There are a number of contradictions, like if you grew up under socialism you may not have much genuine respect for private property, especially less intuitive intellectual property
That explains the behavior of US corporations, which all grew up supported by socialism-for-corporations-at-the-expense-of-The-People.
This sounds kinda fake. (Score:2)
A person's story is not interesting when there's no reason to believe it. Extraordinary claims and all that...
Like the Barbary Pirates (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know how true this article is, but true or not, it reminds me of what happened when the marines went to 'the halls of Tripoli'.
Pirates and slave raiders based on the Mediterranean shore of Africa were attacking and raiding ships from European countries, and also the newly created USA. This included enslaving Europeans they captured.
This is from memory so it's simplified and maybe a bit off in the details (Any one interested can check themselves), but the richer countries, like Great Britain, bought them off, but the USA couldn't afford that so went after them, sending in the marines, and secured a treaty so that they would leave Americans alone.
Now, once again, it seems, the USA has threatened force to end harassment by another country, though less formally this time.