DarkMarket_ Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You - Misha Glenny [118]
When we broached the subject of the FBI and Keith Mularski, a withering look spread slowly across his face. ‘The FBI have nothing on me. If they did, why did not Master Splyntr send information which the Turkish police could use to charge me?’ he asked. ‘Instead all they can do is use this small-time nobody, Ortaç, to try and trap me.’ Çagatay then claimed that he had hacked into Mularski’s database and extracted the information gathered by the FBI on all the DarkMarket members, including the material on himself.
Being in prison, Çagatay was of course unable to document his claims. He said he knew that Splyntr was FBI from the beginning (although Çagatay joined DarkMarket at JiLsi’s invitation in February 2006 when Master Splyntr was quite well established on the board) and that his strategy was ‘to keep my friends close and my enemies even closer’ – hence his willingness to work with Splyntr as an administrator.
It was an appropriate topic on which to end. At its heart, the story of DarkMarket was about two men – Çagatay Evyapan and Keith Mularski, both supported by impressive teams and contacts. Cha0 was no ordinary criminal. While making money was the primary purpose of the enterprise, Çagatay seemed to regard the struggle between himself and law enforcement as having a deeper significance, almost as though he was seeking to demonstrate his superior ability and, by implication, the futility of law enforcement’s attempts to police cyberspace. In this lay a strong element of the original anarchism of geek culture – behavioural patterns and moral codes undergo a shift as we move from the real to the virtual. The rules of the game are different and new.
The FBI agent ran out the winner, but it was a narrow victory and by no means complete. Three years after DarkMarket closed down, the echoes of this extraordinary criminal venture can be heard in prisons and courts in several parts of the world. And, of course, many DarkMarketeers are still stalking cyberspace.
The Internet is a transcendental invention that has seeped into every part of our lives and into every room in our homes. But beware – Lord Cyric might be hiding in a virtual cupboard somewhere.
EPILOGUE
At first glance the demise of DarkMarket appeared to deal a major blow to crime on the Internet. But it didn’t. It did, however, temporarily place a spanner in the works of some major carding networks, including Cha0’s operation in Turkey, Maksik’s in Ukraine and Freddybb’s in England. But the primary message that other serious cyber criminals took from the whole affair was simple: engagement in carding forums like Shadowcrew and DarkMarket, especially those English-language sites with large memberships, now entailed an unacceptable level of risk.
There was already some evidence that members whose main aim was to make money rather than enhance their reputation were far less present on DarkMarket than they had been on Shadowcrew. The number of posts made by people like Freddybb declined dramatically from one to the other. On Shadowcrew he posted fifty public messages and 200 private. On DarkMarket this stood at fifteen and twelve respectively. The US Secret Service’s takedown of Shadowcrew clearly demonstrated the vulnerability of these sites and Freddybb had learned the lesson: lower your visibility.
Alongside the dangers of being busted, the carding forums had in any event outlived their use. It was via these websites that criminals had, over almost a decade of activity, established global networks of people they could trust. Whether as buyers or sellers of illegally procured data and documents, they had found their markets.
But the exposure of Keith Mularski as Master Splyntr, and the revelation that DarkMarket was in part a law-enforcement sting operation, undoubtedly hastened the demise of the carding forums. This wrecked the long-term strategy of the FBI and