DarkMarket_ Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You - Misha Glenny [100]
They were also described in many novels that were inspired in equal measure by Dungeons and Dragons and the Lord of the Rings. The figure of Lord Cyric had a crucial part to play in the mythology of the Forgotten Realms – in addition to being a god, he was thoroughly evil. More importantly for the world of carding and DarkMarket, Cyric was known inter alia as the Prince of Lies, whose satanic powers included a mastery of deception and illusion as well as the ability to promote strife and intrigue.
Whoever lay behind the avatar in CardersMarket, DarkMarket and elsewhere, he or she wanted to project the concept of what Dungeons and Dragons gamers refer to as ‘chaotic evil’, implying that the character scatters the seeds of mayhem and despair arbitrarily wherever he or she may roam. That certainly fitted DarkMarket’s Lord Cyric as snugly as his penchant for deception, illusion, strife and intrigue. Few carders generated as much hostility in the community as this character did. His speciality was to spread accusations through rumour and innuendo.
For reasons never understood, Cyric would pick a target, like RedBrigade, who had exploited Shadowcrew to such lucrative effect in New York. Then he would set out to destroy his reputation among fellow carders with a thousand cuts. A little hint here or a little insinuation there that RedBrigade was not all he appeared, or coded drop-ins to suggest that RedBrigade was in fact working for law and order. His language was snarky and childish, yet carefully designed to cause maximum distress to the target of his attacks.
Yet Cyric had his champions, too – none more stalwart than Cha0. With an oversized brain and a superiority complex to match, Cha0 only ever recognised two computer users as his equal. His contempt for the FBI’s cyber division was boundless, but he warmly acknowledged the hacking skills of Max Vision, aka Iceman, even though the two had often found themselves at loggerheads due to Iceman’s attacks on DarkMarket. And when talking of Lord Cyric, Cha0 almost went so far as to recognise his old friend as being even more elevated in the hackers’ pantheon than he himself was.
In a short space of time, Lord Cyric had succeeded in positioning himself as a key moderator and administrator on boards like The Grifters, CardersMarket and finally DarkMarket. Nobody understood what his game was or what he was trying to achieve, although those whom he targeted immediately assumed that he was working for law enforcement either as an officer or as a confidential informant.
In Pittsburgh, FBI Agent Keith Mularski had no idea. Like many others, he believed that the person behind Lord Cyric lived in Montreal, Canada, but his enquiries of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police cyber division brought him no joy. In fact, although Cyric’s IP addresses could be traced to Montreal, they would occasionally show up as being located in Toronto, which is where some sleuths suspected he really lived.
Several carders picked up and ran with the rumour that Lord Cyric was in reality Brian Krebs, a journalist writing on cyber security who at the time worked for The Washington Post. There was no evidence for this – indeed, quite the contrary, for Krebs is far too serious a writer to risk ruining his reputation by becoming involved with the people he is actually investigating. There followed a slew of rumours, but nobody ever got to the bottom of who Lord Cyric really was or what he was doing.
While exhorting others to indulge in all manner of dubious activities, Lord Cyric never engaged in criminal transactions himself, which reinforced the thesis that he was working for law enforcement or an intelligence agency.
Everybody believed, however, that Lord Cyric had a voluminous knowledge of the carding community and how it worked. And that is why he was much sought after. Carders wanted him to put them in touch with peers