Thursday, March 28, 2024

Inside the FBI, cybercrime investigations in Russia and Ukraine failed

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He recalled the report a few hours ago, when the Ukrainian surveillance team said they were tracking the tank, and there was intelligence that the suspect had been at home recently. None of them seem to be credible.

Five people were detained in Ukraine that night, but when it came to the tank the police said was responsible for the operation, they left empty-handed. Of the five arrested in Ukraine, none have been detained for a long time.

Somehow, Ukraine’s operation—a two-year international effort to catch the largest cybercriminals on the FBI’s radar—has turned out. The tank slipped away under the surveillance of the SBU, while the other major participants cleverly avoided the serious consequences of their crimes. Craig and his team were angry.

But if the situation in Ukraine is depressing, then the situation in Russia is even worse, and no one from the FBI is on the scene. The trust between Americans and Russians has never been stronger. In the early stages of the investigation, the Russians had waved goodbye to Slavik’s identity to the FBI.

“They try to get you off target,” Craig said. “But we know what happens when we play these games. In any case, we are very loose about what we send to them. Even if you know something, you will try to push it to them to see if they will cooperate. When When they don’t—oh, no surprise.”

The maddening mix of corruption, competition, and obstruction made the Trident Breakthrough lose its primary goal.

Even so, when the raid took place in Donetsk, the Americans hoped they would receive a call from Russia regarding the FSB raid on the residence of the money launderer Maxim Yakubetsak (Aqua). It was replaced by silence.

The operation was a success-dozens of low-level operators were arrested in Ukraine, the United States and the United Kingdom, including some personal friends who helped the tank Transfer of stolen money Leaving England. But the maddening mix of corruption, competition, and obstruction made the Trident Breakthrough without its primary goal.

“It boils down to Normandy Landing Day, and we were hallucinated,” Craig said. “SBU is trying to [the Russians]The FBI is calling the Moscow embassy. This is complete silence. In any case, we ended up operating without FSB. This is a few months of silence. there is nothing. “

Close criminals

Not everyone in the SBU drives a BMW.

After the raid, some Ukrainian officials who were dissatisfied with the corruption and leaks within the domestic security services concluded that the 2010 Donetsk raid on tanks and Jabber Zeus crew failed because of a man named Alexander Khodakovs. The corrupt SBU officials of Ji provided clues.

At that time, Khodakovsky was the head of the Donetsk SBU SWAT unit, which was called the Alpha group. It was the organization that led the raid on the breakthrough of the Trident. According to the former SBU official who accepted MIT Technology Review anonymously, he also helped coordinate law enforcement throughout the region, which allowed him to tell suspects in advance to prepare to search or destroy evidence.

When Russia and Ukraine went to war in 2014, Khodakovsky defected. He became the leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, and NATO said it received financial and military assistance from Moscow.

However, the problem is not just a corrupt official. Ukrainian investigations and legal proceedings against the tank and its crew continued after the raid. But the former SBU official explained that they were handled carefully to ensure that he remained free.

“Through his corrupt connection with the SBU management, Tank arranged for all further legal proceedings against him to be conducted by the SBU Donetsk office instead of the SBU headquarters in Kiev, and eventually managed to stop the case there,” this A former official said. The SBU, FBI and FSB did not respond to requests for comment.

“It boils down to D-Day, we are ghosted.”

Jim Craig

What emerged was that the tank was deeply entangled with Ukrainian officials with ties to the Russian government, including former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was deposed in 2014.

Yanukovych’s youngest son Viktor Jr. is the godfather of Tank’s daughter. In 2015, Yanukovych Jr.’s Volkswagen minivan crashed into ice on a lake in Russia, where his father was still in exile after being convicted of treason by a Ukrainian court.

When Yanukovych fled east, the tank moved west to Kiev, where he is believed to represent some of the interests of the former president and his own business.

“Through this contact with the president’s family, the tank managed to establish corrupt contacts with the top Ukrainian government, including law enforcement,” the SBU official explained.

Since Yanukovych was deposed, Ukraine’s new leadership has turned more decisively to the West.

“The reality is that corruption is a major challenge in preventing cybercrime, and it may rise to a fairly high level,” Passwaters said. “But after working with Ukrainians to fight cybercrime for more than 10 years, I can say that there are many very good people in the trenches working silently on the right side of this fight. They are the key.”

The warming of relations with Washington is the main catalyst for the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine. Now, when Kiev tries to join NATO, one of the conditions for joining NATO is to eliminate corruption. The country’s recent cooperation with Americans in cybercrime investigations has reached an unimaginable level in 2010. But corruption is still widespread.

“In recent years, Ukraine has generally been more active in combating cybercrime,” the former SBU official said. “But only when we see the criminals are actually punished, I will say that the situation has fundamentally changed. Now, we often see public relations gimmicks that do not cause cybercriminals to stop their activities. Announcing the deletion of some content, some searches, Then releasing all relevant personnel and letting them continue operations is not the right way to solve cybercrime.”

The connection between tanks and power has not disappeared. Allied with the powerful Yanukovych family, and the Yanukovych family itself has close ties with Russia, and he remains free.

Imminent threat

On June 23rd, FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov (Alexander Bortnikov) in lead It is said that his agency will cooperate with the Americans to track down criminal hackers. It didn’t take long for two specific Russian names to appear.

Even after the raid in 2010 destroyed most of his business, Bogachev is still an outstanding cybercriminal entrepreneur. He formed a new criminal gang called the Business Club; it quickly grew into a behemoth, stealing more than $100 million in funds, which were distributed among its members. By 2013, the organization moved from hacking bank accounts to deploying some of the first modern ransomware, using a tool called CryptoLocker. Bogachev once again became the center of the attack The evolution of a new type of cybercrime.

At about the same time, researchers from the Dutch cybersecurity company Fox-IT paid close attention to Bogachev’s malware and discovered that it was not just a random target. The malware is still quietly searching for information on military departments, intelligence agencies, and police in Georgia, Turkey, Syria, and Ukraine. These countries are Russia’s close neighbors and geopolitical opponents.Obviously, not only does he work in Russia, but his malware Is actually looking for information Representing Moscow.


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