DarkMarket_ Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You - Misha Glenny [0]
McMafia
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2011 Misha Glenny
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in England by The Bodley Head, The Random House Group Limited, London.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Glenny, Misha.
DarkMarket : cyberthieves, cybercops and you / by Misha Glenny.
p. cm.
title: Dark market
eISBN: 978-0-307-70055-1
1. Computer crimes. 2. Computer crimes—Prevention.
3. Organized crime—Government policy. I. Title.
II. Title: Dark market.
HV6773.G54 2011
364.16’8—dc23
2011013882
Jacket illustration by Thomas Hubben
Jacket design by Barbara de Wilde
v3.1
For Miljan, Alexandra and Callum
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Other Books by This Author
Dedication
Prologue
BOOK ONE
Part I
1 An Inspector Calls
2 Miranda Speaks of a Brave New World
3 Mr Hyde of Lagos
Part II
4 The Odessa Files
5 CarderPlanet
6 A Family Affair
7 Boa Constricted
8 Script Rewrite
Part III
9 Tiger, Tiger
10 Game Theory
11 No Turning Back
12 A Passage to India
13 Shadowlands
Part IV
14 The Iceman Cometh
15 CardersMarket
16 DarkMarket
17 The Office
18 Suspicious Minds
19 Donnie Brasco
20 A Cunning Plan
Part V
21 The Dron Legacy
22 Dude You Fucked Up
23 Matrix Squared
24 The French Connection
25 The Invisible Man
Interlude
The Land of I Know Not What and I Know Not Where
BOOK TWO
Part I
26 Bilal in Pittsburgh
27 The Sublime Portal
Part II
28 Ciao, Cha0
29 Softly Softly
Part III
Orientation
30 The Dream World of Mert Ortaç
31 A Servant of Two Masters
32 Turkish Delight
33 Return to Hades
34 Turkey Shoot
35 The Death of DarkMarket
Part IV
36 Double Jeopardy
37 Zorro Unmasked
38 Who Are You?
39 On the Road to Nowhere
40 Midday Express
Epilogue
A Note on Sources
Acknowledgements
PROLOGUE
crime@21stcentury.com
In humanity’s relentless drive for convenience and economic growth, we have developed a dangerous level of dependency on networked systems in a very short space of time: in less than two decades, huge parts of the so-called ‘critical national infrastructure’ (CNI in geekish) in most countries have come under the control of ever more complex computer systems.
Computers guide large parts of our lives as they regulate our communications, our vehicles, our interaction with commerce and the state, our work, our leisure, our everything. At one of several cybercrime trials I have attended in recent years, Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service demanded the imposition of a so-called Prevention of Crime Order on a hacker, which would come into force after his release from prison. The Order would block him from accessing the Internet except for one hour a week under the supervision of a police officer. ‘By the time my client completes his sentence,’ the defendant’s lawyer remarked at the hearing, ‘there will barely be a single human activity that will not somehow be mediated by the Internet. How is my client supposed to live a normal life under such circumstances?’ he asked rhetorically.
How indeed. Those who have left their mobile phone at home even for a few hours usually notice an intense irritation and a sense of loss, akin to cold turkey among more dependent users. Interestingly, when deprived of the device for three days, this corrosive feeling of unease is often replaced by a rush of liberation as one is transported back to a world, not so far away, where we neither had nor needed mobile phones and we arranged our lives accordingly. Today most people feel they cannot live without these tiny portable computers.
Perhaps the nearest comparison to computers is the motor vehicle. As cars became a standard family item from the 1940s onwards, only a minority of drivers