Russian youths study the modern art of hacking

[InfoSec News <isn () C4I ORG>]

http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-2000121801845.htm

By Geoffrey York
TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL
December 18, 2000

MOSCOW They call themselves "the Viper Brothers," "the Software
Underground Empire" and "Armageddon in Russia."

They borrow their philosophy from martial arts and Zen Buddhism. They
study at the feet of a bearded guru known as "Arvi the Hacker," or
simply "the Teacher."

They are the teen-age students of Russia's first school of computer
hacking. And while their skills and bravado might seem dangerous, they
say they are the good guys, defending their clients from an
international war of viruses, hack attacks and computer crime.

The Civil Hackers' School, operating from a shabby little Moscow
apartment, is helping shape the new generation of Russian computer
whiz kids who have provoked fear and anxiety in the West.

Russian hackers are blamed for a series of spectacular feats in recent
years: stealing secret Microsoft source codes; ransacking the
Pentagon's computers; hacking into NATO Web sites; posting thousands
of credit-card numbers on the Internet; and stealing millions of
dollars from Western banks.

The country's post-Soviet economic collapse, combined with its rampant
software piracy and its prowess in mathematics, has created a breeding
ground for aggressive young hackers.

In Moscow, the Hackers' School sees itself at the forefront of a
revolution.

"A hacker can do something that influences all of mankind," said the
school's founder, Ilya Vasilyev, 27, a former software pirate better
known on the Internet as "Arvi the Hacker."

"Every country, every company, needs hackers now," he tells his
students. "You have a feeling that you can do anything. You don't have
that in any other job."

Several hundred have studied at the hacker school since 1996, earning
bracelets with ranks similar to judo belts. (The highest honor is a
black bracelet, known as "guru level.")

The school, preaching an altruistic moral code, says it trains
students for legitimate jobs in computer security, defending employers
against viruses or hack attacks.

"I won't take students when I see they have a criminal tendency," Mr.
Vasilyev said. "A hacker must be a wise person, like a samurai or a
karate master. You have to use all of your wisdom not to harm people."

But the temptations are constant. The first lesson for freshmen
students is a stern warning against illegal hacking.

"Many people read about hackers in the newspapers and they think how
great it is," Mr. Vasilyev tells the teens. "But they don't read to
the end of the article, where the hacker gets sentenced to jail."

The latest hacker exploit was the daring raid on Microsoft, in which
the secret source codes for the latest Windows program were taken. The
raider was traced back to St. Petersburg, Russia, which has become a
hotbed of hacking.

Russian hackers first captured the world's imagination in 1994, when a
young mathematician, Vladimir Levin, hacked into the computers of
Citibank and transferred $12 million to the bank accounts of friends
around the world. He conducted the entire operation from his St.
Petersburg apartment.

He was eventually arrested and jailed, but others were inspired to
similar feats of cyber-crime. Ilya Hoffman, a brilliant viola student
at the Moscow Conservatory, was arrested in 1998 on charges of
stealing $97,000 over the Internet. He served a year in jail.

Another group of Russians stole more than $630,000 by hacking into
Internet retailers and grabbing credit-card numbers. Banking-fraud
specialists have warned that Russian hackers are the greatest single
threat to security at European banks.

"Piracy is prospering, and nobody is fighting it," said Sergei
Pokrovsky, 25, editor of Khaker, a hacker magazine that has built a
circulation of 50,000 in just two years.

"Pirate software is for sale everywhere. People get used to the idea
that piracy is normal. Computer crimes aren't seen as very serious.
The police have so many other problems on their hands. A lost credit
card is seen as nothing, compared to murder and all the other crimes
in this country."

Because of the shortage of high-paying computer jobs in Russia, even
skilled specialists can be limited to salaries of just a few hundred
dollars a month. Hacking is a tempting alternative. By stealing a
password, they can use the Internet for free. And by cracking programs
or doing pirate software jobs in the evening, they can boost their
incomes considerably.

Some of the world's biggest Internet companies, including CompuServe
and America Online, were forced to abandon Russia in 1997 because of
the widespread use of stolen passwords.

Hacking can also be a political message. Hackers are active on both
sides of the Chechnya war, in the ranks of the Russian secret police
and in coordinated attacks on military computers in the United States
and other members of NATO.

When NATO launched its bombing campaign in Yugoslavia last year,
Russian hackers retaliated with their own wave of attacks on NATO
member countries, breaking into their Web sites, posting anti-NATO
slogans and overloading them with floods of junk e-mails.

"I supported it," Mr. Pokrovsky said. "It was an outburst of emotion.
It had no practical results, but we wanted to show that we could
influence the West through the Internet. It was like a banner of
truth. And the hackers knew they wouldn't be punished for it. When the
police caught one guy, they just congratulated him."

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