Russian
From left to right: Dokuchaev, Sushchin, Belan, Baratov
Until the mid-2000s, the Americans actively cooperated with the FSB in the search Cybercriminals, but soon discovered a strange thing. If a talented hacker could still track down, then he immediately disappeared from the radar and went underground. A few years later it turned out that he was already working for Russian intelligence. “In describing our goals, in fact, we helped the FSB identify the talented guys and recruit them,” says Milan Patel, the former technology director of the FBI’s cyber-division, and now the managing director of the American company K2 Intelligence, which specializes in information security.
Soon it became clear that the Russian special services drove Americans to the nose, writes Buzzfeed. Russian intelligence not only recruited hackers, but also hired some of them under contract to perform dirty work, when it is necessary to dig up information on a certain person, for example.
But the US intelligence services were not going to surrender. And the hunt began.
On March 14, 2017, a long-term operation to uncover the criminal grouping that could be implicated in Yahoo’s cracking in 2014 with a leak of 500 million accounts came to a logical conclusion – the largest hack of this kind in history. On that day, 22-year-old Canadian-Kazakh hacker Karim Baratov was detained in his house in Ankaster (Ontario), who is currently awaiting trial in an American prison. This guy carried out hacking orders under the contract, including, probably, for the FSB. Such work allowed him to earn by 22 years on a good house, cars Mercedes Benz and Aston Martin DBS (these are his cars at the time of arrest, and on his Facebook page Baratov used to boast BMW, Audi and Lamborghini cars).
, That the criminal group included Alexei Belan (29 years old), who is still wanted. Moreover, two regular intelligence officers – Dmitry Aleksandrovich Dokuchaev (33, the online nickname Forb) and Igor Anatolyevich Sushchin (43 years old) worked with these guys.
The official position of Major Dokuchaev is the senior operative of the 2nd department of the operational control of the Information Security Center (OU CIB) of the FSB of Russia. According to Vedomosti, an operational officer of the Information Security Center (CIB) of the FSB Dokuchaev was arrested last December in the case under art. 275 (high treason), together with Sergei Mikhailov, head of the department of the CIB, deputy head of the center. As for Sushchina, the Americans consider him the boss of Dokuchaev. He was also an undercover agent and head of information security in a Russian investment bank.
The identity of those arrested on charges of treason by Russian hackers once again demonstrates that the government of the Russian Federation uses cybercriminals for their own purposes. In fact, the FSB has many points of contact with the underworld. Remember the BlackEnergy Trojan, which was originally created by hackers for its own purposes, and then it was used to carry out state orders, including cyber attacks on the media and industrial facilities in Ukraine. Let us recall cases of using botnets for DDoS attacks on Russian and foreign “political” purposes. For example, the DDoS attack on Estonia was organized in 2007 within the framework of a public-private partnership, Patel believes.
The constant cooperation of independent hackers with state services and the fulfillment of the state order of the Kremlin was told by Ruslan Stoyanov, Manager of Kaspersky Lab – this company also participated in many cyberoperations. This company was founded by Evgeny Kaspersky (pictured), a graduate of the Institute of Cryptography, Communication and Informatics under the FSB. For example, Kaspersky Lab specialists analyzed US programs used for espionage and sabotage (Stuxnet, etc.).
Stoyanov speaks about the cooperation of cybercriminals and state customers.
“Also recently There were evidences of “devastating” Russian-speaking cybercrime, attempts to agree between cyber-fraudsters and state officials. The essence of the deal is that the state gets access to the technologies and information of “cyberbanks” in exchange for allowing to steal with impunity abroad, “Stoyanov said. – The most terrible scenario is to give cybercriminals immunity from retaliation for stealing money in other countries in exchange for intelligence. If this happens, a whole layer of “patriotic thieves” will appear, violating the principles of the rule of law and the inevitability of punishment. “
The arrest of Baratov and his accomplices in the FSB gave a go-ahead for mass raids on Russian hackers, which the US intelligence services immediately began. It seems that now it is just beginning. In early April 2017 in Spain, Peter Levashov was detained (he is known online as Peter Severa). The 36-year-old resident of St. Petersburg led a free way of life and traveled freely around the world. According to the wife of Levashov, law enforcement agencies broke into the apartments at night, during which the Levashov family lived during their holiday in Barcelona, and detained her husband. It is assumed that Levashov is related to the notorious hacker group Fancy Bear, who hacked the servers of the National Committee of the Democratic Party of the USA, etc. (to find compromising evidence on Hillary Clinton), and in general carried out state orders since the Georgian war.
Deface of the site of the President of Georgia during the armed conflict on August 9, 2008
In early January, another Russian programmer Stanislav Lisov was detained in Barcelona, who in case of extradition to the United States faces up to thirty Years imprisonment. He is suspected of cyber-fraud.
“We reached the boiling point with Russia. They are the closest competitor to the US in terms of cyber espionage and cyberattacks, “Patel explains. “But Russia is playing by other rules, and maybe without rules at all.” Americans often found it difficult to distinguish the actions of criminal syndicates from politically motivated attacks related to the Kremlin, because these two worlds are no longer separated from each other.
In the interview, many experienced Russian hackers say that for them hacking and work On the Internet are inseparable from each other. In the early 90’s, access to the Internet was not sold to individuals. You could go online only by obtaining a corporate password for dialing some office.
Russian in the Internet cafe, July 25, 1997, Moscow
That is, only through hacking you could get online, another way did not have. All of us then were small hackers, but someone went further along this path. These guys now need to unwind the fishing rods, because the Americans seem to be on the warpath.
During the investigation, BuzzFeed News journalists contacted several Russian hackers and some of them speak of a “real panic” in the community. Nobody knows what will happen next, how far Americans are willing to go. Who is next in line for arrest and landing.
US law enforcement officials commented that there are reasons for panic: “Gloves are thrown off,” one of them said. Hide who can.
