Russian police rounds up an organized criminal group

Date: July 05, 2004
Source: Computer Crime Research Center
By: Dmitri Kramarenko

July 28, 2004 officers of Russian cyber police (Department K of the Ministry of Internal Affairs) nipped in the bud activities of a big organized criminal group, that has been manufacturing and selling special technical devices for secret obtaining of information from technical channels of radio communications for several years, including computer information and information processed in computer system.

Revenues from criminal business amounted to hundreds of thousands of US dollars.

Criminals illegally produced and sold the following special technical devices. Outwardly they look like a usual phone with extended functions (caller identification, alarm clock, autosecretary, diverting of calls, memory of incoming and outgoing calls and other) like "Rus", "Yaguana" and "Panasonic". This device, plugged in to a usual phone socket, allows to tap any phone conversation in any city. You may just need to type any phone number or an area code of the needed town and local phone number if the tapped subscriber resides in another town. This device was sold at the price of $5,000. Another device, a "keyboard spy" is designed for interception and recording of text typed at the target computer. It is necessary to attach (to glue) a bug to keyboard cable of "tapped" computer. The "bug" transmits electromagnetic signal intercepted from the keyboard to a special radio receiver connected to a PC or a laptop for a distance up to 1,000 meters.

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