Five indicted in massive hacking scheme

July 25, 2013

Five men from Russia and Ukraine have been indicted in New Jersey for charges they conspired with each other in a worldwide hacking scheme targeting major corporate networks that compromised more than 160 credit card numbers, the U.S. Department of Justice announced. The men allegedly attacked the networks of several companies, including Nasdaq, 7-Eleven, JCP, Dow Jones and Hannaford, the DOJ said. Companies reported $300 in losses from the attacks, the DOJ said in a press release. Charged in an indictment unsealed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey were Vladimir Drinkman, 32, of Syktyykar and Moscow, Russia; Alexandr Kalinin, 26, of St. Petersburg, Russia; Roman Kotov, 32, of Moscow; Mikhail Rytikov, 26, of Odessa, Ukraine; and Dmitriy Smilianets, 29, of Moscow. Drinkman and Kalinin allegedly specialized in penetrating network security and gaining access to the corporate victims’ systems, while Kotov allegedly specialized in mining the compromised networks to steal data, the DOJ said. The defendants hid their activities using anonymous Web-hosting services provided by Rytikov, while Smilianets allegedly sold the information stolen by the other conspirators and distributed the proceeds of the scheme to the participants. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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