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The Story of the tech.net.ru Crackers

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the caught-iwth-your-pants-down dept.

tabdelgawad writes "The Washington Post is running a three-part story (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3) detailing the events of the arrest of the two Russian crackers, Vasiliy Gorshkov and Alexey Ivanov, from a couple of years ago (See also Previous Slashdot Story 1 and 2). The writeup is light on technical details, but includes fascinating information about the crackers' socioeconomic conditions and motivations, as well as the competence and effectiveness of the FBI in combatting cybercrime."

3 of 231 comments (clear)

  1. interesting paper by AbdullahHaydar · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is an interesting paper from Feb 2002 on which countries originate the most malicious attacks. (Russia doesn't even make the list)

    Google cached HTML version of the paper.

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  2. Moral of the story: by Johnny+Mnemonic · · Score: 4, Informative


    Don't use Windows for mission critical applications where money changes hanges. Although these articles only mention it in passing, either in an attempt to remove technical "jargon" or due to a wish to defer to MSFT, it does mention that these guys exploited vulns in NT, and fails to mention that they exploited any other OS. Maybe it's blaming the victim, but why were these CIOs astonished when they were hacked? Best case is that it was lack of research on their part. Worst case it was plain stupidity. Nevertheless, MSFT isn't held accountable.

    On a related note, I was an indirect victim when they targeted an online shop that I purchased some stuff from (www.thenerds.net). Although I didn't lose cc info, the shop told me that my account was being held hostage unless they paid up. My response: I won't do business with them again, for depending on MSFT to secure their e-biz. I've also gone to a disposable Credit Card, which I recommend: www.mbnashopsafe.com.

    Bottom line: any "CIO" that depends on MSFT for e-biz security gets what's coming to him.

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  3. No sympathy for them by Brother52 · · Score: 4, Informative

    There's absolutely NO PROBLEM getting a decent computer job in Russia, if you're any good. Decent programming skills will earn you enough to live on in virtually any city that's not small (Chelyabinsk is big). I'm a Russian, so I guess I know what I'm talking about.

    There's just that kind of people who are reasonably smart, but with ambitions far outweighting their creative abilities. These often become crackers. Living conditions just don't matter here.

    As to mafia demanding "protection money" - I really don't see it happening to a company that is barely afloat and works fully within the law. There're just lots of better targes. So I guess this was a consequence, not the cause.