US charges two Russian crypto hackers

[TravelMug]

The Russian people have a proverb: "there is a very small distance between courage and stupidity."
If someone shows his face to the camera, then he has serious protection or he is sick with an incurable disease and he has a very short time to live.
Recently, statements about Russian hackers have been in a political context.

I think it will be in the future, as hackers or cyber criminal themselves have been viewed by the US as threat to their national security. So yeah, there is a political context and we might see countries filing diplomatic protest in the process, not that far fetch.

It this case, well the hacker shows his face in the camera, so this is like criminals making fun and taunting US. Not well taken, so US make it a case to haunt this hackers and bring him to US soil to face charges.

[Kemarit]

So he was vacationing and thought that he is safe in Europe and beyond US, but with Interpol's help, he was caught extradited to US, not that easy though as it might involved a lot of politics between US and Russia, but eventually he was extradited and sentence to 7 years behind bars.

He was over confident about his position and he thought he was too intelligent and powerful to stay away from the authorities that are after him  .
Hacking is one aspect but when stupid people are involved with blackhat methods and does not understand the consequences it is a great lesson as he ruined his life.

And maybe he was just really dumb and went to the extremes of not hiding himself in plain public. And since he is identified, perhaps he uses his real name, got a hit on Interpol, and got arrested soon.

not that easy though as it might involved a lot of politics between US and Russia, but eventually he was extradited and sentence to 7 years behind bars.

Ties with USA due to being an EU and NATO member are more important so the legal battle amounted to taking advantage of the rights he had as a detainee in Czechia. Prague is still infamous for being a hive of Russian spies but their golden years are over.

I have another theory. I think that everything will depend on which company gets hacked. If this is a small exchange, then formal measures will be taken, if it is a large corporation, for example, LinkedIn, then completely different methods will be involved.
If a hacker breaks into government services, then he will be found in another country, and the security services will not look at the laws of other countries.

Good theory, the more high profile attack, the more US will get their hands on it. Just like what happened to the recent Twitter hack, FBI got involved when high profile personalities account was hacked. And in matter of days, the culprit was caught. Maybe it's comparable to Bin Laden's daring attempt by the US to capture him dead or alive in a foreign soil. Imagine the repercussions on breaking a foreign soil air without notification. Pakistan did file for diplomatic protest but nothing has move ever since.

[zasad@]

The Russian people have a proverb: "there is a very small distance between courage and stupidity."
If someone shows his face to the camera, then he has serious protection or he is sick with an incurable disease and he has a very short time to live.
Recently, statements about Russian hackers have been in a political context.

I think it will be in the future, as hackers or cyber criminal themselves have been viewed by the US as threat to their national security. So yeah, there is a political context and we might see countries filing diplomatic protest in the process, not that far fetch.

It this case, well the hacker shows his face in the camera, so this is like criminals making fun and taunting US. Not well taken, so US make it a case to haunt this hackers and bring him to US soil to face charges.

I will write another theory.
Most Russians love to show off. I think you've heard a lot of stories about Russian majors who break the law or shoot this camera for YouTube. This is one of the ways to become famous and popular.
If you drive a car through the cities of the United States at a speed of 300 km per hour, you will be sent to prison, and there will be no punishment in Russia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FPH_dzd0as
Perhaps these people know that they will not be punished in Russia, so they brag to the camera.

[TravelMug]

The Russian people have a proverb: "there is a very small distance between courage and stupidity."
If someone shows his face to the camera, then he has serious protection or he is sick with an incurable disease and he has a very short time to live.
Recently, statements about Russian hackers have been in a political context.

I think it will be in the future, as hackers or cyber criminal themselves have been viewed by the US as threat to their national security. So yeah, there is a political context and we might see countries filing diplomatic protest in the process, not that far fetch.

It this case, well the hacker shows his face in the camera, so this is like criminals making fun and taunting US. Not well taken, so US make it a case to haunt this hackers and bring him to US soil to face charges.

I will write another theory.
Most Russians love to show off. I think you've heard a lot of stories about Russian majors who break the law or shoot this camera for YouTube. This is one of the ways to become famous and popular.
If you drive a car through the cities of the United States at a speed of 300 km per hour, you will be sent to prison, and there will be no punishment in Russia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FPH_dzd0as
Perhaps these people know that they will not be punished in Russia, so they brag to the camera.

I think the criminals have the habits of showing off, specially when they break law and think that they are above it. We have seen criminals even glorified in Hollywood movies. Again, for this hackers he seems to be living the life of a real hackers seen in movies, travelling around the country even though he has a criminal past and think he even the US will not get to him. Maybe he thinks he can hide under the guise of politics (Russia vs US). But obviously he is very wrong.

[malevolent]

I will write another theory.
Most Russians love to show off. I think you've heard a lot of stories about Russian majors who break the law or shoot this camera for YouTube. This is one of the ways to become famous and popular.
If you drive a car through the cities of the United States at a speed of 300 km per hour, you will be sent to prison, and there will be no punishment in Russia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FPH_dzd0as
Perhaps these people know that they will not be punished in Russia, so they brag to the camera.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPZfpS2uEp4



Not the first time someone's doing something like this. But if anyone tried driving like that in some European countries, they'd go to prison.

[zasad@]

I will write another theory.
Most Russians love to show off. I think you've heard a lot of stories about Russian majors who break the law or shoot this camera for YouTube. This is one of the ways to become famous and popular.
If you drive a car through the cities of the United States at a speed of 300 km per hour, you will be sent to prison, and there will be no punishment in Russia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FPH_dzd0as
Perhaps these people know that they will not be punished in Russia, so they brag to the camera.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPZfpS2uEp4



Not the first time someone's doing something like this. But if anyone tried driving like that in some European countries, they'd go to prison.

Fight for 2nd place at the wedding.
You will definitely not see such traditions in the USA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2EFNKdXBnY
If someone does not understand what is happening, then it is very honorable to go after the groom's car, so the drivers are fighting for this place.

In Russia, pallets and machine guns are prohibited, but there is also a tradition to shoot at a wedding.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz1pewNDYXg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ3eVNZmj5M

[smyslov]

Not sure how these court cases usually play out, but in theory a good lawyer is going to ask the government how they tracked these users down and unless it's a sealed case, those methods should be made public, no?

Good question but it's still a charges the government have to prove the evidences that these people are guilty before they are convicted the much bigger question if all the accused are residing in a country where there is no diplomatic relationship, how are they going to extradite these people, I believe the trial will push through, this is something to watch out for.

[usekevin]

Not sure how these court cases usually play out, but in theory a good lawyer is going to ask the government how they tracked these users down and unless it's a sealed case, those methods should be made public, no?

Good question but it's still a charges the government have to prove the evidences that these people are guilty before they are convicted the much bigger question if all the accused are residing in a country where there is no diplomatic relationship, how are they going to extradite these people, I believe the trial will push through, this is something to watch out for.

It's unaccepted one.Russian government should do such things,US should do the spectator role and not decision making role.Since their is no diplomatic relationship between US and Russia.US not have a power to counter part the Russian Hackers.The sentence should be done after a proper Judicial trial.

[zasad@]

It's unaccepted one.Russian government should do such things,US should do the spectator role and not decision making role.Since their is no diplomatic relationship between US and Russia.US not have a power to counter part the Russian Hackers.The sentence should be done after a proper Judicial trial.

Diplomatic relations between the US and Russia are working. The American government does not extradite its citizens to other countries and the Russian government does the same. There are agreements between countries, but this is a different topic.
In politics, you can very often find double standards when foreign countries do not fulfill their obligations to Russia, but they do not like to discuss this in the news.

[raji1995naya]

Let's see the response of the Russian government about this. These 2 are extremely dangerous. When they are free we don't feel safe about our virtual money.

[fightnight247]

I would say that these hackers didn't take care of their footprints and that's why the US government was able to follow their tracks and identify them through their names.

[feposif487]

This is a move that I would personally encouraged because it sends a message to people that the crypto world is not a free for all that you can come in because you have a special skill or smarter than other but you believe that those skills can not be put into better use than to steal people resources and make them cry just because they wanted to earn legitimate inflow of a platform that they have been provided such opportunity. Kudos to the United States government agencies for taking this initiative.

[zasad@]

If relations between countries are conflicting and any requests are processed for a very long time, then some companies have learned to make money on this.
Group-IB, Deteact, Kaspersky and other companies are addressing these issues. They find criminals and pass the data on to the police. And the Russian police turn to these companies for help, and the police get it for free, because in most cases they do not have such specialists.
This new milestone, if you have the money, you can always find a hacker.

[bryant.coleman]

As long as these two remain in Russia, they are going to be safe. A part of the funds has been seized by the US authorities. But at this point I don't think that they can do much more than this. Especially after the controversy surrounding the arrest of Alexander Vinnik, I don't think that the Russians will cooperate with the American authorities (and deportation is a strict no-no).

One of the accused is an ethnic Greek and I assume him to have dual Russian-Greek nationality. At the most, the Americans can force the government of Greece to cancel his Greek passport.

[zasad@]

Sandworm
https://theins.ru/politika/236113  ( Russian)

Book:
Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers Hardcover – November 5, 2019
https://www.amazon.com/Sandworm-Cyberwar-Kremlins-Dangerous-Hackers/dp/0385544405

Here is such propaganda about Russian hackers.
Although every major country in the world has such teams