DarkMarket_ Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You - Misha Glenny [21]
Other parts of the globe were less inclined to be moulded by plastic. Western Europe had traditionally eschewed the buccaneer economics that had so bewitched America and Britain. As a consequence, credit-card ownership was much lower, along with the level of personal debt. In Eastern Europe there was neither sufficient capital spread across the population nor a secure banking industry to administer credit cards. Plastic was a rarity in the former communist world, an executive toy for the New Russians – that tiny proportion of the population who had made breathtaking fortunes by ripping off their countries and compatriots during the transition from communism to capitalism.
But in the Anglo-Saxon casino economics of the 1990s and 2000s, plastic was the closest invention to printing money ever devised by financial institutions and they were not slow to excavate this rich lode of capital. Tons of leaflets were sent daily to addresses in the Western world exhorting people to sign up for credit cards or to exchange an existing debt for a new account that would not charge interest for six months. For three or four years more diligent consumers were able to secure interest-free credit as they transferred their outstanding balance from one card to the next, while the banks became ever more frantic in their attempts to secure new customers.
So many cards. So much money with which to play. Since large electronic wads of the stuff were sloshing around on the Web, it was perhaps no surprise that it began to attract the attention of cyber men from the East who were short on cash, but brimming with technical ingenuity. One of them was Script, eighteen-year-old Dimitry Golubov from Odessa.
And so it was that CarderPlanet was born.
5
CARDERPLANET
A question fades up in flickering Star Wars script:
LOOKING FOR PROFESSIONAL SOLUTION?
The shot zooms in on a rapidly spinning Earth that explodes into a metallic psychedelic pattern, accompanied by an aggressive electro-dance number, followed by a series of messages:
DISCOVER THE POWER OF TECHNOLOGY
FEEL TIRED OF EVERYDAY ROUTINE?
WANT TO CHANGE YOUR LIFESTYLE?
BECOME ONE OF US!
DUMPS – CREDIT CARDS
CAN MAKE YOU RICH!
The screen fades to black, before three more messages appear underscored by a militaristic bass drum:
THE TEAM YOU CAN RELY ON
Boom!
EVERYTHING YOU NEED FOR BUSINESS
Boom!
CARDERPLANET IS INEVITABLE
Boom!
A year after CarderPlanet was founded in 2001, Script invited his hacker friends to the First Worldwide Carders’ Conference in Odessa – the world’s first ever cybercrime convention – to celebrate the trail-blazing website. This group could boast the same incredible cyber ability as the members of the Hacker Republic, the secret group to which heroine Lisbeth Salander belonged under her nickname, Wasp, in Stieg Larsson’s best-selling The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
But there was nothing fictional about Script and his friends. CarderPlanet was for real.
6
A FAMILY AFFAIR
The First Worldwide Carders’ Conference celebrated CarderPlanet’s first birthday. It was unique and remarkable. By 2002 Odessa had calmed down: there were even signs of normality. Its iconic boulevard, Deribasovskaya, was brimming with street vendors, shops and fancy restaurants. Surrounded by the four-leaved clover and Gaelic inscriptions of Mick O’Neill’s, one of post-communist Ukraine’s first fake Oirish pubs, an inner core of Ukraine’s top hackers, known as The Family, discussed the goals of the conference. Among them were top figures such as Auditor, Rayden and Bigbuyer, along with the moving spirits of the event: Boa, a communications and security boffin with a distinctive white beard, and the energetic if slightly juvenile Script.
Over the next three days in several different locations around the city they drank and sang, but above all they discussed the short- and long-term development of their nascent website, CarderPlanet, which was already changing the nature of cybercrime around the world.
General discussions