US intelligence agencies often catch "Russian" hackers and carders.
A young man was slowly sipping a cocktail at nice airport, leaving after a rough rest, when a special forces squad burst into the waiting room.
In the hacker world, Khorokhorin is better known under the pseudonym BadB.
American government agencies called CarderPlanet perhaps the most dangerous community of cybercriminals.
"I broke the Israeli army"
How does the carder business work? You can steal Bank card information in completely different ways: copy it in a restaurant when paying an invoice, convince the user to enter data on a fake website, hack into the database of a Bank or large retailer, or install a reader at an ATM. Such databases can be resold, and not necessarily resold by hackers themselves. Sometimes sales channels are searched for by intermediaries. This is partly why hacker forums are needed, where you can find potential buyers.
One of these intermediaries, Dmitry Golubov, was met in 1998 by Vladislav Khorokhorin, who needed real Bank card details to access a porn site. "In practice, Dima could not hack anything more serious than his parents' dresser. He couldn't even install Windows properly. His real talent was organizing people, haggling and bartering", says Khorokhorin about Golubov.
Prior to this incident, khorokhorin was almost not engaged in carding: he stole ICQ numbers, hacked Internet service providers, and even managed to serve time in an Israeli prison, where he moved with his mother from Donetsk. "I broke the Israeli army. After serving time and being kicked out of the service with a Bang, I then broke the Israeli Bank Discount, " says Khorokhorin. Then he was about 20 years old. Carding has become a new passion for Khorokhorin. He was increasingly sitting on the forum Carder.org where he also invited Golubov.
As Khorokhorin recalls, Golubov immediately decided to make money and placed an ad for the sale of credit cards, or "cardboard", as they were called in the crowd. However, almost immediately he was kicked out for such an ad. "It was allowed to place an ad for sale if you yourself directly stole the goods being sold," explains Khorokhorin. According to him, Golubov immediately decided to open his own forum Carder.ru which would be an alternative Carder.org. For the position of administrator and web designer, he called his new friend Khorokhorin-BadB. The forum became popular almost immediately.
However, the new forum did not last long: the site received many complaints, and it was closed. But its creators immediately registered three new domains: Carderplanet.com, Carderplanet.net and Carderplanet.org. So, in 2001, the history of the forum began, which the us intelligence agencies would later call "the most dangerous cybercrime organization."
From "watching" to "Dony"
The new site was rapidly gaining popularity: there you could chat with like-minded people, read training articles, ask for advice, negotiate a deal or get an order. The forum was run by administrators, the most important of whom called themselves dons in the spirit of the Sicilian mafia, and all together they were "family". However, initially the creators of the forum were closer to the Russian criminal romance: they called themselves virtual "thieves in law" and "watchers", but this was quickly abandoned. "We are also not far from the criminal world of the CIS.
The Carderplanet forum gradually began to attract not only carders, but also representatives of other cybercrime spheres. And sometimes even people who are far from hacking at all. So, one of the donovs on the forum was Roman VEGA: he had his own project Boa Factory, which not only sold credit cards, but could also make passports of other countries by order.
"The procedure with the registration of European and American passports was simple: the customer sent photos via "soap" to .jpg, their requirements for the passport of a particular country and their (desired) data, and after some time (usually several weeks) received by mail, to the address specified when ordering, the finished passport. If desired-with a handful of stamps of entry and exit from different countries-so that the passport does not look new," says the source of Forbes, familiar with VEGA.
VEGA found out about the carder forum almost by accident: a partner told him about CarderPlanet, to whom VEGA complained about frequent hacker attacks on the systems of his companies. VEGA quickly got used to the new environment, and in mid-2002, he became almost the main character at the forum participants ' meeting, which the creators of CarderPlanet decided to hold in Odessa. Why do hackers need a conference? At that time, professional conferences of cybersecurity specialists were being held in the United States, and carders wanted to make an analog.
Vladislav Khorokhorin
"Top managers" of the forum tried to control transactions and life on the forum. According to Khorokhorin, everyone had to obey "universal" moral values: "don't piss", "don't rat", "respect the hierarchy", "don't shit where you live". Although it was not possible to completely avoid conflicts. "Showdowns were constant, like any other business, especially criminal, here the struggle for spheres of influence is inevitable. And people were often caught. No one, of course, died, not animals, but sometimes they were hit hard", says Khorokhorin.
VEGA's cooperation with CarderPlanet ended quickly enough, and in February 2003, he was arrested in Nicosia. As VEGA himself told Forbes, local police and Interpol officers detained him in a music store while he was choosing a CD. At the same time, the Castelli hotel, where VEGA lived, was raided: there the police found another hacker, Liratto, and three laptops. "These computers were also attributed to me. Liratto spent 9 months in Cyprus and went to Ukraine. I have nothing to do with it. He's a good person, " VEGA sums up.
A young man was slowly sipping a cocktail at nice airport, leaving after a rough rest, when a special forces squad burst into the waiting room.
In the hacker world, Khorokhorin is better known under the pseudonym BadB.
American government agencies called CarderPlanet perhaps the most dangerous community of cybercriminals.
"I broke the Israeli army"
How does the carder business work? You can steal Bank card information in completely different ways: copy it in a restaurant when paying an invoice, convince the user to enter data on a fake website, hack into the database of a Bank or large retailer, or install a reader at an ATM. Such databases can be resold, and not necessarily resold by hackers themselves. Sometimes sales channels are searched for by intermediaries. This is partly why hacker forums are needed, where you can find potential buyers.
One of these intermediaries, Dmitry Golubov, was met in 1998 by Vladislav Khorokhorin, who needed real Bank card details to access a porn site. "In practice, Dima could not hack anything more serious than his parents' dresser. He couldn't even install Windows properly. His real talent was organizing people, haggling and bartering", says Khorokhorin about Golubov.
Prior to this incident, khorokhorin was almost not engaged in carding: he stole ICQ numbers, hacked Internet service providers, and even managed to serve time in an Israeli prison, where he moved with his mother from Donetsk. "I broke the Israeli army. After serving time and being kicked out of the service with a Bang, I then broke the Israeli Bank Discount, " says Khorokhorin. Then he was about 20 years old. Carding has become a new passion for Khorokhorin. He was increasingly sitting on the forum Carder.org where he also invited Golubov.
As Khorokhorin recalls, Golubov immediately decided to make money and placed an ad for the sale of credit cards, or "cardboard", as they were called in the crowd. However, almost immediately he was kicked out for such an ad. "It was allowed to place an ad for sale if you yourself directly stole the goods being sold," explains Khorokhorin. According to him, Golubov immediately decided to open his own forum Carder.ru which would be an alternative Carder.org. For the position of administrator and web designer, he called his new friend Khorokhorin-BadB. The forum became popular almost immediately.
However, the new forum did not last long: the site received many complaints, and it was closed. But its creators immediately registered three new domains: Carderplanet.com, Carderplanet.net and Carderplanet.org. So, in 2001, the history of the forum began, which the us intelligence agencies would later call "the most dangerous cybercrime organization."
From "watching" to "Dony"
The new site was rapidly gaining popularity: there you could chat with like-minded people, read training articles, ask for advice, negotiate a deal or get an order. The forum was run by administrators, the most important of whom called themselves dons in the spirit of the Sicilian mafia, and all together they were "family". However, initially the creators of the forum were closer to the Russian criminal romance: they called themselves virtual "thieves in law" and "watchers", but this was quickly abandoned. "We are also not far from the criminal world of the CIS.
The Carderplanet forum gradually began to attract not only carders, but also representatives of other cybercrime spheres. And sometimes even people who are far from hacking at all. So, one of the donovs on the forum was Roman VEGA: he had his own project Boa Factory, which not only sold credit cards, but could also make passports of other countries by order.
"The procedure with the registration of European and American passports was simple: the customer sent photos via "soap" to .jpg, their requirements for the passport of a particular country and their (desired) data, and after some time (usually several weeks) received by mail, to the address specified when ordering, the finished passport. If desired-with a handful of stamps of entry and exit from different countries-so that the passport does not look new," says the source of Forbes, familiar with VEGA.
VEGA found out about the carder forum almost by accident: a partner told him about CarderPlanet, to whom VEGA complained about frequent hacker attacks on the systems of his companies. VEGA quickly got used to the new environment, and in mid-2002, he became almost the main character at the forum participants ' meeting, which the creators of CarderPlanet decided to hold in Odessa. Why do hackers need a conference? At that time, professional conferences of cybersecurity specialists were being held in the United States, and carders wanted to make an analog.
Vladislav Khorokhorin
"Top managers" of the forum tried to control transactions and life on the forum. According to Khorokhorin, everyone had to obey "universal" moral values: "don't piss", "don't rat", "respect the hierarchy", "don't shit where you live". Although it was not possible to completely avoid conflicts. "Showdowns were constant, like any other business, especially criminal, here the struggle for spheres of influence is inevitable. And people were often caught. No one, of course, died, not animals, but sometimes they were hit hard", says Khorokhorin.
VEGA's cooperation with CarderPlanet ended quickly enough, and in February 2003, he was arrested in Nicosia. As VEGA himself told Forbes, local police and Interpol officers detained him in a music store while he was choosing a CD. At the same time, the Castelli hotel, where VEGA lived, was raided: there the police found another hacker, Liratto, and three laptops. "These computers were also attributed to me. Liratto spent 9 months in Cyprus and went to Ukraine. I have nothing to do with it. He's a good person, " VEGA sums up.
