Thread by @nimkef

16 Sept 2015

A Russian national today admitted his role in hacking that targeted major corporate networks, compromised 160M+ credit card numbers & resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses – the largest such scheme ever prosecuted in the US

justice.gov/usao-nj/pr/rus…

Dmitriy Smilianets, 32, Moscow
pleaded guilty pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in a manner affecting a financial institution.

Smilianets was arrested in the Netherlands 28 June 2012 and was extradited to the District of New Jersey 7 Sept 2012

The five defendants each played specific roles in the scheme.

Vladimir Drinkman, 34, of Syktyvkar and Moscow
Alexandr Kalinin, 28, of St. Petersburg, Russia

specialized in penetrating network security and gaining access to the corporate victims’ systems.

Drinkman &
Roman Kotov, 34, of Moscow

specialized in mining the networks to steal valuable data

Mikhail Rytikov, 28, of Odessa, Ukraine

Provided the hackers anonymous web-hosting services to hide their activities

Smilianets sold the information stolen by the other conspirators and distributed the proceeds of the scheme to the participants.

Drinkman and Kalinin were previously charged in New Jersey as “Hacker 1” and “Hacker 2” in a 2009 indictment charging Albert Gonzalez, 34, of Miami, Florida, in connection with five corporate data breaches – including the breach of Heartland Payment Systems Inc.

Kalinin is also charged in SDNY:
First is in connection with hacking computer servers used by NASDAQ

Second charges him and another Russian hacker, Nikolay Nasenkov, w/ an international scheme to steal bank account info from US financial institutions.

Rytikov was previously charged in the Eastern District of Virginia with an unrelated scheme.

Drinkman and Smilianets were arrested at the request of the United States while traveling in the Netherlands on 28 June 2012.

Kalinin, Kotov and Rytikov remain at large.

The five defendants penetrated the computer networks of several of the corporate victims and stole user names and passwords, means of identification, credit and debit card numbers and other corresponding personal ID info of cardholders. They allegedly acquired 160M+ card numbers

Instant message chats obtained by law enforcement revealed the defendants often targeted the victim companies for many months, waiting patiently as their efforts to bypass security were underway. They had malware implanted in multiple companies’ servers for more than a year

Smilianets was in charge of sales, selling the data only to trusted identity theft wholesalers. The end users encoded each dump onto the magnetic strip of a blank plastic card and cashed out the value of the dump by withdrawing money from ATMs or making purchases with the cards.

Unlike traditional Internet service providers, Rytikov allowed his clients to hack with the knowledge he would never keep records of their online activities or share information with law enforcement.

Over the course of the conspiracy, the defendants communicated through private and encrypted communications channels to avoid detection. Fearing law enforcement would intercept even those communications, some of the conspirators attempted to meet in person.

https://twitter.com/nimkef/status/1425525666498420743?s=20

Co-conspirators

Albert Gonzalez
aka segvec
aka soupnazi
aka j4guarl7
a co-conspirator who is not charged as a defendant herein, resided in or near Miami

justice.gov/usao-nj/file/7…

Damon Patrick Toey
a co-conspirator who is not charged as a defendant herein, resided in or near Virginia Beach, Virginia, and in or near Miami

Vladislav Anatolievich Horohorin ("Horohorin")
aka "BadB"
resided in or near Moscow, Russia

Co-conspirator- I ("CC# I"), a co-conspirator who is not charged as a defendant herein, resided in or near Kiev, Ukraine

The Corporate Victims of Computer Hacking

NASDAQ
Heartland Payment Systems
Commidea
Dexia Bank
Dow Jones
"Bank A" (UAE)
Euronet
Visa
Global Payments Systems
Discover/Diners
Ingenicard

JetBlue
7-Eleven
Carrefour
JCPenny
Hannaford Brothers
Wet Seal Inc.