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Russian Hacker Gang Vanishes Again

Posted by kdawson on from the now-you-see-'em dept.

Arashtamere writes "The shadowy hacker and malware hosting network that only recently fled Russia to set up operations in China has now pulled the plug there and vanished yet again. An analyst at VeriSign's iDefense Labs unit said iDefense had tracked RBN's migration earlier in the week from servers based in Russia to ones running in China, after obtaining at least seven net blocks of Chinese IP addresses. As of Wednesday, RBN controlled 5,120 IP addresses assigned to Chinese service providers; known RBN clients were even seen using those addresses that day. But with its China move putting the spotlights of the media and the security community on the organization, RBN suddenly went offline on Thursday. 'They severed connections to six of the seven net blocks on November 8,' the analyst said. RBN as a single organization may be dead and gone; it may even now be breaking up into smaller pieces farmed out to multiple countries' Internet infrastructures."

5 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Alternative Theory: Russian Mafia Groups by reporter · · Score: 5, Interesting
    There may be another possibility. With so much unwanted attention in the media, the Russian Business Network (RBN) may voluntarily have broken up into numerous small groups. In much the same fashion, the alumni of the KGB have broken up into numerous small cliques. Each clique is essentially a mafia gang with a strongman as boss and wields considerable power.

    As the Kremlin moves into cyberspace, each KGB clique will want a "piece of the action" and has absorbed some alumni of the RBN. In the 21st century, even the Russian mafia needs an online presence.

  2. Re:yeah? by Joebert · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sure it does, it makes way for competitors.

    Being a botmaster looks alot like being a drug dealer, & that's what happens with drug dealers.

    --
    Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
  3. Re:Don't be so fast by Chief+Wongoller · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well, actually I'm in China too. The interesting aspect of internet access in China is that ISPs here always provide much higher upload speeds than download speeds, by a ratio of about 3 or 4 to 1. This is to serve the interests of Chinese exporters, by making Chinese based websites more accesable to the outside world. That is to say the internet in China is more about exporting data -good or bad- rather than importing. So China is rather a logical location for those hackers, especially as policing of the internet here is almost non-existant ( no fears about P-2P downloading here).Incidentally, download speeds, while slower than North America or Europe are not always painfully slow. Speed depends largely on where you live: I live a a modern building in a modern city and can get download speeds of 100k/s no problem.

  4. Curious... by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm curious, is Slashdot not censored?

    I imagine if you're having to go around that, it might slow things down a bit.

    --
    Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
  5. Re:Alternative Theory: Russian Mafia Groups by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting
    You have already established yourself as a Pole. You post surprisingly much anti-Russian fud on /. for a single person:

    (BTW, all of these posts show how little you know about Russia)
    Do you have an agenda or something?
    Or are Poles so stuck in history that it's their new fetish now: ruining US/EU relationships with Russia?