Our citizens know how to surprise the world. Igor Klopov, a modest 24-year-old Muscovite, has taken and robbed those on the Forbes magazine list, and in absentia, from a distance.
Sitting in his apartment and scouring the Internet, he got out the financial details of several billionaires. The catch of the virtual search turned out to be much more real – at least 1.5 million “zeleni”. However, it was just a warm-up. Hacker with American accomplices planned to take ten times more. He was caught by the Americans and is awaiting trial. But this is no reason for credit card users to breathe a sigh of relief. The number of swindlers is multiplying, and it seems that the era of virtual robberies is just beginning.
Bedbug took the virtual high road two years ago. Then through the World Wide Web, he first persuaded one of the American brokerage firms to sell shares of a wealthy couple from California. The deal pulled a million dollars and went unnoticed. The second screwed was the co-owner of a hotel chain billionaire Anthony Pritzker. How much “lost weight” his purse, now investigators are finding out. The next victims were friends of President Bush Jr. himself – billionaires brothers Charles and Samuel Wiley.
The Americans lured the hacker out of Russia by stealth. The police contacted him under the guise of accomplices and invited him to the States. For the meeting, Klopov flew to the Dominican Republic, from there he traveled with his “accomplices” to New York, where he was arrested. According to Klopov’s lawyer Arkady Bukh, his client’s family in Russia is very concerned. Under U.S. law, Klopov faces 25 years in prison. Apparently, he agreed to cooperate with the authorities in the hope of reducing his sentence.
This story has thrown American billionaires into a quiet panic. Who to trust, where to keep their hard-earned money, if a simple Russian guy can get into the coolest bank on the Internet and rob it to the ground? For simplicity of heart, many still think that they live in a familiar world, where there are such immutable concepts as the secrecy of the bank deposit, fireproof safe and checkbook. It seems worth forgetting these words. Mankind has spawned and unleashed a monster called the virtual world. You sneezed in front of a computer screen with a video camera, and the other side of the world will know about it. You’ve made money, and hackers are already scrambling to sneak it out of your electronic account. The Internet is invading our lives, and the appetites of virtual robbers are growing with it. Maybe more than one person on the Forbes list will become their victim.
EXPERT OPINION
Artem Genkin, expert in the field of electronic payments:
– This is a really stunning story. But it can happen to anyone who has his personal data swindled out by attackers. I’m not a billionaire, but when I came to work today, I found a dozen spam messages in my e-mail box promising free gifts. To do this, unknown “well-wishers” ask only to provide my credit card details. Theft of electronic data from the bank is also possible. I can assume that such stories will serve as a lesson and force banks to tighten their data storage standards. Although this in turn may cause hackers to switch from billionaires to just wealthy citizens. What’s the difference between robbing one billionaire of a million dollars or stealing a hundred dollars from ten thousand.
AT THIS TIME
In Astrakhan, an attempt to steal 20 million rubles was stopped. An employee of the bank’s network technology and computer department made unauthorized access to the local computer network from his office computer. He entered into the database the electronic payment slips he had created for transfers from the bank’s correspondent account to the settlement accounts of three different firms. However, the computer technician did not manage to get the money – he was detained.
WHAT DO BLOGS SAY ABOUT THE HACKER?
Russian bloggers reacted strongly to the news of the arrest of their compatriot Igor Klopov. Here’s what they are saying in their online diaries.
Jarey:
“Here’s wondering what the Russian government intends to do about this, and whether it intends to do it at all? Wild people – hackers. Hack into a closed Pentagon website, break into the UN mainframe, hack into and suspend the security system of some American spaceport…. Tell me, people, do you really believe that the US shuttle didn’t take off (or explode?) because some drunken cretin cut the wires at the computer?”
Sunny:
“As for this particular case, as a lawyer, I can say only one thing: if the Russian government does not intervene in the fate of this great-aged child, Igor Klopov, the price of our Constitution, legislation and international treaties is nil. Every Russian citizen has the right to be judged by his own country, not by a leftist court with no authority. Where is the government looking? Hey government!!!!”
Dark cat:
“I’m proud of my country! We still have such people, who can fool the bourgeoisie around their fingers. He decided to buy gold only in vain, naive! He should have transferred the money offshore. He won’t go to jail, maybe only for the honor of the uniform Americans will torture him, and then they will offer him to work for them. They’re all stupid there, and they use Russian brains to get away with it.
And one of Igor’s fellow writers has even started writing a poem about the arrested hacker. He promised to finish it soon.
Stinger:
“In a damp prison, west of Paris, Still dangerous but disarmed, Sits one Moscow hacker Misha, For robbing a big bank he robbed. Forced to cut his hair, in a striped robe, With a round target on his back, Counts bedbugs in his stone womb, Writes programs with chalk on the wall. Then suddenly he strokes a dirty floor mat, Then he cries quietly if he sees a mouse, Threatens to kill the Interpol goats, Twenty years from now, right, Mish? He snuck into the bank from a satellite in Angola, He got away with the networks of African countries, Burned all the diskettes where he kept the passwords, And brazenly dumped the satellite into the ocean, Already at the bottom, not on the bunk, Almost in the taiga, but…. “They caught him in the Canaries, when he was siphoning money in the casino.
CHRONICLE OF HACKER ATTACKS
For several years Russian hackers have been considered a kind of “skillful” abroad. According to polls of world hacking sites, the best hackers in the world are our compatriots, for whom 82 percent voted. Only 5 percent gave the palm of primacy to Americans.
“Popularity” of Russian cyber vandals began with the fact that in 1994, St. Petersburg resident Vladimir Levin stole more than 10 million dollars from the New York ‘Citibank’. The case received worldwide publicity. In Russia, Levin managed to avoid responsibility, as at that time in our legislation articles for cybercrime did not yet exist. In the United States, the hacker was sentenced to 18 months in prison, but the court, taking into account the time he spent under investigation, released the hacker at the end of the same 1998. His traces were lost somewhere in the Czech Republic.
In 1996, Russian hackers learned how to break into the first Internet banking payment systems. The FBI determined that the crime scene was just a small apartment in the south of Moscow.
In 1999, another Russian hacker, Vasily Gorshkov, began hacking into foreign websites and databases, then offered to buy them back from the owners. If they refused to pay, he resold the information to someone who was willing to pay for it. Thus Gorshkov “earned” more than 30 million dollars. However, he was still caught – he was arrested in the U.S. and then tried.
Last October, three young men were convicted in the Saratov region for creating malicious programs and extortion. The hackers had been blackmailing betting companies in the UK and other countries for quite some time. They rented paid servers in the USA and through them infected hundreds and thousands of computers in different countries with viruses. Through this network they organized dos-attacks on the sites of betting firms. The blackmailers demanded a large ransom from businessmen to get rid of this scourge.
And the most severe punishment for “virtual games with hacking” was announced a few months ago in Balakovo City Court. Residents of Balakovo, St. Petersburg and Astrakhan each received 8 years in prison. The object of their attack was English bookmakers’ offices. Pinkertons from the country of foggy Albion could not cope with our computer raiders themselves. So they asked their colleagues from the “K” department to help. Our policemen did not fail and found extortionists, who with special programs paralyzed the work of bookmaker sites. For this, by the way, the Volga racketeers demanded 40 thousand dollars from the English. They were caught red-handed.
Source: https://www.trud.ru/article/18-08-2007/119804_ukus_klopova.html