DOJ: Russian 'Superhacker' Gets 27 Years In Prison (thedailybeast.com)

According to the Justice Department, a 32-year-old Russian "superhacker" has been sentenced to 27 years in prison for stealing and selling millions of credit-card numbers, causing more than $169 million worth of damages to business and financial institutions. The Daily Beast reports: Roman Valeryevich Seleznev, 32, aka Track2, son of a prominent Russian lawmaker, was convicted last year on 38 counts of computer intrusion and credit-card fraud. "This investigation, conviction and sentence demonstrates that the United States will bring the full force of the American justice system upon cybercriminals like Seleznev who victimize U.S. citizens and companies from afar," said Acting Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Blanco said in a statement. "And we will not tolerate the existence of safe havens for these crimes -- we will identify cybercriminals from the dark corners of the Internet and bring them to justice."

Comments

Separation of powers

[mi]

The Department of Justice has sentenced a Russian "superhacker" to 27 years in prison

WTF? Since when is the Executive Branch doing the sentencing?!

Bigger Hacks

[rtb61]

So the neocons hacked the US government and started a war over nonexistant weapons of mass destruction, penalty, zero. The banksters purposefully ran a scam to inflate profits and their bonuses whilst cheating customers and investors of billions, penalty, zero.

The Russian broke the law, hacked computer networks and copied credit card numbers, which he then sold to criminals. Those criminals did the stealing, fraudulently using those insecure numbers. Compared to those other crimes with zero penalty, what is going on. I was surprised there was no claim of refusal to help or it appears any effort what so ever to get those criminals who used those credit card numbers (makes the whole thing stink of politics). I would have liked to have seen a reduced sentence, say minus a month for each prosecution the defendant helped to gain against the criminals who used the credit card numbers, or at the very least that effort made. Perhaps the Russian government would have cooperated but no politics seemed to have been the focus.

It seems a major opportunity to track down more Russian criminals was wasted, stupid as.

Wrong focus.

[Gravis Zero]

Everyone involved is completely ignoring the fact that the companies involved were not properly secured. It doesn't take a "superhacker" to get past shitty security and we shouldn't be protecting companies with shitty security. Sure, punish the hacker but you need to also punish the executives that decided security shouldn't be the highest priority. When you put profit comes before security, you are asking, nay, begging to get hacked and that's exactly what happened here.