Russian Cyber Criminals that is costing Western firms billions of dollars in credit card
Date: August 23, 2013Source: Cybersafetyunit.com
The breadth and sophistication of services sold on Russian-language websites such as Forum.zloy.bz or Forum.evil offer a small window onto a Russian criminal underground that is costing Western firms billions of dollars in credit card and online banking fraud as well as “phishing” attempts to lure people into downloading malware or disclosing passwords.
“If you look at the quantity of malware attacks, the leaders are China, Latin America and then Eastern Europe, but in terms of quality then Russia is probably the leader,” said Vitaly Kamluk, a cyber security researcher in Moscow.
Two of the five most wanted men in the United States for cyber crime are Russian, and one is from Latvia, which used to be part of the Soviet Union.
Russians were also behind the biggest cyber crime case in U.S. history. Federal prosecutors named four Russians and a Ukrainian in a banking card fraud spree that cost companies including J.C. Penney Co, JetBlue Airways Corp and French retailer Carrefour SA more than $300 million.
The risk of being prosecuted is so low it does little to dissuade highly educated and skilful but under-employed programmers from turning to illicit hacking for profit or fun.
In a country where wages are lower than in the West and life is expensive, and which has long produced some of the world’s best mathematicians, the temptation to turn to crime is great, and the hackers are in general ahead of the people trying to catch them.
“People think: ‘I’ve got no money, a strong education and law enforcement’s weak. Why not earn a bit on the side?’” said Alexei Borodin, a 21-year-old hacker.
As long as these hackers target victims abroad, experts say, the Russian authorities are willing to sit back and let them develop tools to burrow into computer vulnerabilities, which they can in turn use for their own cyber espionage.
Two of the Russian suspects in the banking card fraud case were arrested while in the Netherlands, but two others – Alexander Kalinin, 26, and Roman Kotov, 32 – are still at large and thought to be in Russia, where experts doubt they will be caught.
Moscow’s decision to harbour Edward Snowden, wanted in the United States for leaking details of government surveillance programmes on the phone and Internet, is likely to freeze already slow-moving cross-border police cooperation with Washington, they said.
“They have been doing this in Russia for many years now,” said Misha Glenny, an expert and author on cyber crime.
“Russian law enforcement and the FSB (Federal Security Service) in particular have a very good idea of what is going on and they are monitoring it but as long as the fraud is restricted to other parts of the world they don’t care.”
Several email requests for comment and calls over three weeks to the special Interior Ministry unit tasked with policing the web – Department K – went unanswered.
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