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*The simplest, albeit incomplete, distinction between viruses, worms and trojans, known collectively as ‘malware’, lies in their method of transmission – viruses through infected email attachments, trojans through downloads, while worms have an ability to self-replicate on a host computer and then use that computer’s communications programs to spread themselves to other machines. But, basically, they all do bad things to your computer.

*‘My bank account is your bank account.’

Part II

4

THE ODESSA FILES

Odessa, Ukraine, June 2002

They came from as far north as St Petersburg and from Latvia on the Baltic Sea; one delegate arrived from Belarus, a country created in 1990, seemingly as a living memorial to communism. The Russians were there in force and Ukraine provided a host of delegates, whether from Ternopil in the west, Kiev in the centre, Kharkov in the north or Donetsk in the east.

But the First Worldwide Carders’ Conference (FWCC) was truly international. Some attendees had arrived from Western Europe while others had flown in from as far away as the Persian Gulf, Canada and South America. The FWCC’s press release lamented how delegates from Australia and South-East Asia hadn’t made it, due to travel difficulties.

The organisers hand-picked three dozen or so delegates from the 400 applications they had received. Those lucky enough to be given the thumbs-up knew that the invitation alone would provide a huge boost to their reputation within the fiercely hierarchical world of online criminals.

In order to throw police off the scent, the organisers originally announced that they were holding the event on several luxury yachts moored off Turkey’s Black Sea coast. But this was just a feint. After all, where else could you possibly hold the world’s first ever conference for cyber criminals than in Odessa – Ukraine’s fabled city of rogues?

Using their well-tested methods, the Tsar, Stalin and Hitler all had a crack at taming this wild beast, but none of them could crush Eastern Europe’s most enduring criminal fraternity. ‘Without an understanding of Odessa’s gangsters and their lives,’ one chronicler wrote about his home town, ‘the city’s history is simply unintelligible.’

For most of Eastern Europe the bare-knuckled gangster capitalism that followed the collapse of communism in the 1990s came as a genuine shock. But Odessa knew what was coming. The Odessites had no option but to embrace the new era – and, it should be said, they did so with a certain brio. Red lights extinguished red stars overnight. Dingy casinos sprouted like weeds behind the Primorskaya Boulevard and it was not long after 1989 that the restaurants and saunas became the scenes of gluttony and bloodshed.

Further out from the centre, in the housing estates, drugs became the currency of choice. Penniless youngsters took to shooting up boltushka, a home-made amphetamine mix, leaving them scarred, mentally damaged or dead.

Gunmen and clans from as far away as Chechnya and Moscow battled with local Robin Hoods for control of the city – because although Odessa was theoretically part of a new independent Ukraine, it was entirely Russian-speaking and, even more important, was the only warm-water port able to handle Russia’s gas and oil exports.

Hyperinflation and nationalism destroyed the value of the ruble, the karbovanets, the hryvnia or whatever else the government claimed at any time was ‘real’ money. Only the Yankee dollar provided any real stability.

For most ordinary people, Odessa in the 1990s was about two things: survival and dollars. Nobody cared or disapproved of how you managed the first or acquired the second. In fact, they admired those that achieved either, although sudden wealth was no guarantee of a long life.

In this atmosphere, who could blame thirteen-year-old Dimitry Golubov for selling vehicle registration documents and driver’s licences with the forged signature of the head of the Municipal Transportation Bureau? If businessmen were prepared to pay for this, surely the trade must