Russian organized crime goes phishing

The BlackHat USA 2009 convention provided a wide array of information useful to organized crime aficionados. Here’s an excerpt from a story by ChannelWeb’s Stephanie Hoffman. The subject is the growth of Russian organized crime.

She writes: “Russia's longstanding history with organized crime has nurtured a current crop of sophisticated cybercrime organizations dedicated to information stealing and political 'hacktivism.'

“During a BlackHat USA 2009 presentation, Dmitri Alperovitch, McAfee Internet threat researcher, said that Russia's history of organized crime has paved the way for the emergence of highly sophisticated cybercrime organizations that have spearheaded the emergence of Internet worms, botnets, spamming, phishing and credit card forums.

“But fundamentally, there is little difference between cybercrime and other types of crime. 'At the end of the day, it's about the money,' he said.”

Read the story.