DarkMarket_ Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You - Misha Glenny [50]
Master Splyntr’s true identity had been revealed by the secretive British anti-spam organisation, spamhaus.org. The businessmen, techies, former spooks and God-knows-who-else comprising this team run an effective crusade to blacklist high-rollers of the spam, carding and child-pornography worlds. It scours the digital world for ‘rogue’ ISPs, those Internet Service Providers that turn a blind eye to the criminal activities of their customers. Kaminski, Spamhaus reported on its website, was one of the world’s top five spammers, responsible for vast amounts of unwanted ads for penis enlargements, Vicodin and the rest.
Spamhaus’s interest in Master Splyntr meant that he was a marked man, and five police forces from around the world launched investigations into his activities when he moved from spamming into the realm of carders. Kaminski was also linked to the wholesale distribution of malware, viruses and trojans. He was an established bad dude, and JiLsi was quietly thrilled at having enticed such a big fish into the waters of DarkMarket. He cultivated both Splyntr and Matrix001 assiduously. This was developing into quite a team and when Cha0, the Turkish criminal mastermind, joined the party, DarkMarket developed an undoubted aura of success.
To look at, there was nothing remarkable about DarkMarket. It functioned just like message boards that discuss the perils of parenting or the thrills of bee-keeping. It was harder to access because members had to be nominated and vetted, but this rarely proved a problem for those acquainted with the carding scene and with a determination to join. Actual business – buying and selling – was hardly ever conducted over the forum, for security reasons. Rather it was a place for vendors and buyers to meet; it was where manufacturers of skimming machines could find a market; it was an opportunity for holders of credit-card databases to recruit a team doing ‘cash out’ work (the critical job of going from ATM to ATM extracting cash from accounts). But the details of any deal were almost always hammered out in private messages held on encrypted icq networks. Once a deal was struck, it was back to the website to put in a request for the escrow service where administrators would ensure fair play.
The forum attracted ever more members, and business boomed. Key individuals acted as a bridge between Russian criminals and Western carders, but at the same time JiLsi noticed the geographical circle widening. Turkey was becoming an important cybercrime zone. The communities in Spain and Germany were growing very fast, while even those in France – whose carders felt, like most French people, more comfortable in a French-speaking environment even on the Web – brushed up on their English to enter the fray.
The Golden Age of DarkMarket was under way.
17
THE OFFICE
Renu Subramaniam’s office was a terminal at the Java Bean Internet café. For much of the previous eighteen months Renu had been working on the Web against a background of grinding and screeching, as the modest Java Bean lay in the shadow of Wembley Stadium – and the stadium was undergoing a monumental reconstruction, which, by the middle of 2006, was already overdue and over budget.
In most respects, the café was like thousands of others dotted around the world. Its surroundings were not salubrious. Nestled between the Bowling Nail Bar and a rather dingy-looking chartered accountant’s office, it housed several decrepit, bulky screens and sticky keyboards that were attached to unreliable computers inscribed with faux brand names, marking them as cheap knockoffs from East Asia. Heaven only knows what activities have gone on behind the rickety wooden partitions dividing the grimy consoles.
Bent over the screens, adolescents played online games for hours, often with unparalleled levels of concentration; backpackers composed amusing emails brimming with their impressions of newly discovered lands; curious teenagers and frustrated middle-aged men surfed weird porn sites; idealistic youths planned political protests, imagining