Cybercrime Category: Cybercrime

ATM

ATM skimming on the rise

By Michael Hartleben, Egorov Puginsky Afanasiev and Partners / May 17, 2012

The number of ATM skimming crimes in Russia shoot up ninefold to 362 in Q1 of 2012 compared to only 40 in Q1 of 2011, reports the Russian Europay Members Association (REMA). Such rapid rise in skimming crimes comes somewhat expected as the numbers for Q4 of 2011 (184) were up by 460% already. This information is based on data provided by the REMA’s 20 largest banks, which control approximately 90% of all 184,000 ATMs in Russia.

ATM skimming is a type of fraud, where a victim’s bank card information is electronically recorded while the victim uses an ATM machine. The collected information is then transferred onto a fake bank card, which is either used by the perpetrator or sold on for profit to a third party.

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Cybercrime

Russian-speaking hackers lead global cybercrime

By Elena Mikhaylova, East-West Digital News / May 03, 2012

Group-IB, a leading Russian cybercrime investigation company, has just published its 2011 report on the “State and trends of the ‘Russian’ digital crime market.”

Russian-speaking hackers – both from Russia and abroad – generated more than one third of the global cybercrime value: they earned an estimated $4.5 billion out of a global “cybercrime market” which amounted to $12.5 billion in 2011. Cybercrime from Russia reached $2.3 billion, doubling from $1.2 billion in 2010, the report reveals.

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Presidential election 2012

Cease-fire in political hacking on Election Day

By Elena Mikhaylova, Adrien Henni, East-West Digital News / Mar 05, 2012

In contrast to the massive hacker attacks that took place during the parliamentary election on December 4th and over the following weeks, no notable incidents were reported yesterday when Russian voters reelected Vladimir Putin as their president – a sign perhaps of the increased legal risks and political cost for the parties involved.

Using computer hackers in political battles had become almost common place over the last few years in Russia – the country where the largest number of DDoS attacks originated in the second half of 2011, according to a recent report from Russian Internet security provider Kaspersky.

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SDA

Report: Russia still a threat to global cyber-security, but less exposed to attacks

By Elena Mikhaylova, East-West Digital News / Feb 02, 2012 / 2 Comments

Russia is perceived as a threat to global cyber-security, says a report on worldwide technology safety released earlier this week by the Brussels-based Security & Defence Agenda (SDA). According to experts surveyed for “Cyber-security: The vexed question of global rules,” Russia remains “a thug state with great hackers.”

The report cites Vitaly Kamluk of the Internet security company Kaspersky Lab on past and present Russian trends: “Russia is known around the world for certain types of attacks, [among them] banking Trojans and spam-sending botnets. But we’re growing more and more like the rest of the world now.” Today, Kamluk adds, Russian citizens and organizations themselves come under attack by Russian hackers more and more often.

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Koobface

How a Russian cyber gang created Facebook’s most famous worm

By Elena Mikhaylova, East-West Digital News / Jan 27, 2012

Koobface (the name is an anagram of Facebook), the most famous worm in Facebook’s history, has attracted public attention once again after the social network’s security service announced earlier this month that they were going to reveal the names and photos of criminals behind the malware.

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Cybercrime

Microsoft accuses Russian engineer of creating Kelihos botnet

By Elena Mikhaylova, East-West Digital News / Jan 26, 2012

Earlier this week, Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit, made the findings of its Kelihos botnet investigation public, accusing Andrey Sabelnikov, a Russian engineer from St Petersburg, of having created the bot code and conducted the operation.

In the original complaint filed with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in September, Microsoft alleged that Dominique Alexander Piatti and John Does, who owned a cz.cc domain, used it to register subdomains operating the Kelihos botnet. The charges against the original defendants were dismissed one month later in exchange for their cooperation, which led to identifying the creator of the malware.

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Pavel Vrublevsky

Vrublevsky freed after 6 months in jail

By Elena Mikhaylova, East-West Digital News / Dec 30, 2011

Pavel Vrublevsky was released last week after spending 6 months in Lefortovo prison in Moscow, following his arrest in June of 2011 for organizing a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the website of Assist, a competitor of his company, Chronopay.

A leading Russian online payment processing company, Chronopay processes almost half of all Visa and MasterCard online transactions in Russia and partners with such companies as Britain’s MoneyBookers, Spain’s Caixa Catalunya, the Deutsche Bank subsidiary Pago, and China’s Alipay.

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Cybercrime

Operation ‘Ghost Click:’ How international police operation dismantled major Russian and Estonian cybercrime system

By Elena Mikhaylova, East-West Digital News / Nov 14, 2011

The Estonian police arrested six men (Vladimir Tsastsin, Timur Gerasimenko, Dmitri Yegorov, Valeri Alekseyev, Konstantin Poltev, and Anton Ivanov) last week for organized cybercrime activities on an international scale. The six men are accused of operating various companies that masqueraded as legitimate publisher networks in the Internet advertising industry from 2007 to October of 2011.

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Russian emblem

Moscow couple charged with video piracy with over $1 billion in damages

By East-West Digital News / Nov 03, 2011

Moscow residents Andrey and Natalya Lopukhov have been charged with Internet video piracy, with Russian and international copyright owners seeking damages estimated at over 38 billion rubles, or $1.26 billion. The Russian Office of the Prosecutor General ordered the couple to be arraigned in court on criminal charges, the Russian press reported last week.

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Pavel Vrublevsky

ChronoPay owner Vrublevsky pleads guilty in cyber attack case, court extends detention

By East-West Digital News / Nov 02, 2011 / 3 Comments

Moscow city court confirmed almost two months of extended detention for prominent Russian Internet businessman Pavel Vrublevsky, who is expected to be held until December 23. The court has rejected an appeal filed by Vrublevsky’s attorneys to release the entrepreneur on bail for 30 million rubles, a sum of almost $1 million.

Vrublevsky, 32, was arrested on June 23 at Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow upon his arrival from the Maldives, where he spent his vacation with his wife and children. Vrublevsky has been charged with having organized a cyber attack on the website of Assist, a competitor of Vrublevsky’s company ChronoPay, in an attempt to block payment transactions with the Aeroflot website.

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