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Russian Agency Charges FBI Agent With Hacking
eNonymous Coward writes "An FBI agent who helped lure two Russian 'hackers' to the USA in 2000 so that they could be arrested is now being charged with hacking himself by the Russian FSB. You might remember that Gorshkov and Ivanov exploited an NT vulnerability to steal information from corporate networks, which was then used to extort money from the companies; they're also accused of being behind the CDUniverse and Western Union credit card database thefts. Last year a federal judge ruled that the FBI's action was legal, but the FSB disagrees."
This was an interesting case. The description of how the agents lured the russian "hackers" to the US was beyond belief.
Michael was back at the office downloading data from their computers like mad while they took them to lunch.
The russians were very chatty, too chatty for their own good. IIRC they had something like 350 pages (an entire binder) of transcribed conversations with them. As is usual, the "hackers" were tooting their own horns.
I was called as a witness in the case to testify to data they had recovered and statements the russians had made. The russians had lied about the level of access they had. However, these people were very persistent, they spent a month or so just learning and tinkering trying to get a relatively small amount of data.
It's clear what their motives where though. They were stealing credit cards, setting up Ebay auctions and using proxy PayPal accounts to pay themselves for Ebay auctions they had setup themselves.
I got to learn how serious Paypal takes "hackers" and abuse. Both paypal and ebay (now the same) have dedicated professionals to tracking down "hackers" and fraud.