Russian police bust 63-year-old computer hacker

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://english.hk.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/technology/afp/article.html?s=hke/headlines/010524/technology/afp/Russian_police_bust_63-year-old_computer_hacker.html

Thursday, May 24 10:26 PM SGT 
MOSCOW, May 24 (AFP) 

Russian police have dealt a serious blow to the popular image of
computer hacking as a teenage pass-time by uncovering a ring of mature
online fraudsters that even includes a 63-year-old, the interior
ministry said Thursday.

The well-organised fraudsters, who had already stolen 10,000 dollars
and were planning to divert another 30,000 dollars, were "not teenage
hackers, but serious professional criminals," said Alexander Solovyov
of the ministry's "Department R" which is charged with fighting
hi-tech crimes.

The ringleader was a former policeman in his mid-40s and one of his
henchmen was a 63-year-old retired computer programmer, according to
Solovyov.

After stealing 300 foreign credit cards, the hackers opened their own
Internet store, to which they transferred money from the stolen cards
under the guise of legitimate online transactions.

Police arrested three out the group's five members after a tip-off
from Cyberplat, Russia's main digital payment company, which had begun
to suspect the online store's business operations, Solovyov said.

Dmitry Chepugov, the head of Department R's Moscow office, admitted
that the amount of money stolen was relatively low, but said this was
because the arrests had been "a rare example of a successful police
operation" to prevent online crimes.

The hackers could face up to 10 years in jail if convicted under
Russian law, Chepugov said.

He said police estimates reckon computer theft in Moscow costs the
state 12 to 15 million dollars a month.

Department R opened 436 criminal cases in Russia in 2000, four times
as many as in 1999, and the rate of hi-tech crimes tripled last year,
with the annual number of cases rising as high as 20 times over the
past three years.

However, Russian legislation is completely unsuited to fighting
computer-related crimes, and Department R's has scant resources
compared to those of the hackers, Chepugov complained.

Department R was founded in 1998 and its Moscow branch opened in
September 2000, but Chepugov declined to tell journalists how many
operatives it employed, adding that such information was a "state
secret."




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