Fergie's Tech Blog

From Russia With Malice: Criminals Trawl The World

Nick Miller writes on TheAge.com.au:

If it weren't true, it would be the script for the next Bond movie.

The mission: to eliminate a man. Codename: "flyman". Elite hacker. Suspected head of the so-called "Russian Business Network", a hotbed of cyber-fraud, child pornography and malicious "bot-nets" that wreaks havoc across the internet from its St Petersburg base.

"We don't know who he is," admits Rick Howard, director of intelligence at Virginia-based internet security company VeriSign. "We don't know if it's a hierarchical organisation or a loose confederation of similar groups. But it's organised.

"They are making millions of dollars a year. They are not greedy — they take a few dollars here and there and move on to the next victim. And we think their main guy has connections to the (Russian) Government, and is protected by them."

The RBN manages networks of phishing sites and Trojan programs, designed to steal banking passwords. The targets are individuals but the ultimate victims are the banks, who still compensate their customers for cyber-fraud losses.

posted by Fergie @ 7/24/2007 10:27:00 AM