DarkMarket_ Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You - Misha Glenny [43]
The further RedBrigade kept away from these characters, the less likely he was to be spotted by law enforcement. All but a tiny minority of Shadowcrew members were unaware that the Secret Service had achieved deep penetration of the website.
In April 2003 Albert Gonzales, a young American of Cuban origin and one of the most senior Shadowcrew members, had been busted. He was known to the carders as CumbaJohnny. But they did not know that after his arrest he had turned informant, which was the critical breakthrough for the Secret Service. Gonzales ran a so-called Virtual Private Network (VPN) through which the website’s leading actors communicated with one another. A properly maintained VPN renders detection by law enforcement very hard, if not impossible – unless of course the guy administering the administrators is also administering to the cops, as Gonzales was.
On 26th October 2004 the US Secret Service launched a series of raids across the United States, which led to the initial arrest and indictment of nineteen individuals for their role in shadowcrew.com. Several more were picked up later.
‘Shadowcrew,’ ran the indictment for criminal conspiracy, ‘was an international organisation of approximately 4,000 members which promoted and facilitated a wide variety of criminal activities.’ It was the biggest outing for the Secret Service’s young posse of cybercops. The indictment presented in a New Jersey district court sounded dramatic. ‘Administrators,’ it continued, ‘collectively controlled the direction of the organisation, handling day-to-day management decisions as well as long-term strategic planning for its continued viability … The administrators had full access to the computer servers hosting the Shadowcrew website and, correspondingly, had ultimate responsibility for the physical administration, maintenance and security of these computer servers as well as for the content of the website.’
The media engaged with the Shadowcrew takedown in a rush of excitement, going so far as to suggest that this was the virtual equivalent of crushing the Corleone clan in Sicily. Coverage was helped because one of the indicted was a woman, Karin Andersson, aka Kafka, although the Secret Service had actually failed to uncover that the real criminal was her boyfriend, who was simply using her computer and IP address to commit crimes. Hardly a surprise, given that 96 per cent of hackers are male.
Doubtless the arrests were justified. But were the ‘administrators’ the guys making the money from Shadowcrew? No, they were not. It is true that among them were some so-called ‘monetisers’ (chief among them Gonzales who, notwithstanding his close ties to the Secret Service, later engineered an even more notorious bust – the hacking of T.J. Maxx’s credit-card database).
But the cops faced a problem that would frequently recur: hackers are not typical criminals. True, their skills are exploited by real criminals to commit real crimes against real people. But the hackers are often oblivious to this aspect of their activity. They are Script’s ‘lone wolves’, often uninterested in amassing a fortune and more concerned to elevate themselves as masters within their peer group. ‘You have to understand,’ JiLsi explained, looking back on the carding experience, ‘that this was all a game. It was like playing Grand Theft Auto, except you are doing it for real. You pit yourself against living and breathing cops. And that makes the buzz so much bigger! It is about respect. It is about …’ JiLsi paused for effect, ‘your reputation.’
In one regard, however, the Shadowcrew bust of criminals operating on the Internet replicated the effect of a major takedown of a mafia organisation in the