June 29, 2000
In Bleak Russia, a Young Man's Thoughts Turn to Hacking
By JOHN VAROLI
s a teenager living in St. Petersburg,
Russia, Slava was an accomplished
athlete, with a fanatical love of high-risk sports like snowboarding and skiing. In
March 1998, a snowboarding accident left
him paralyzed from the waist down. Now 22,
Slava spends his evenings at home with his
parents and 16-year-old brother and engages in a different sport: hacking.
"It will take us about five minutes to start
hacking into other computers," Slava said
after making his way across his bedroom
with the aid of two crutches.
Taking a seat in front of his Pentium 166
PC, he opened a hacking program that he
had downloaded from the Internet and
typed in a range of numbers specifying
Internet Protocol addresses he had found by
hacking into a major American Internet
service provider. His computer began to
hum and search for computers that were
online and in that I.P. range.
Slava, who is known to his fellow hackers
as Dr. Linux, waited for about a minute for
his computer to list nearly a dozen computers and their I.P. addresses. He clicked
energetically with his mouse and hit different function keys to zero in on one computer.
Slava pulled up the computer's contents on
his screen. The documents were written in
German for a college course and included a
file that contained a paper analyzing far-right political groups in Germany.
"We've taken his files, and he'll never
know it," Slava said as he opened and copied
some of the files. "Most people have no idea
that once online, they are wide open to
intrusion from others out there."
He tried to gain access to another computer on his list, but that one was protected
behind a firewall. "I could probably crack
it," he said, "but it would take me several
hours."
Slava is one of a growing number of
computer hackers in Russia. Most of them
are afraid to speak to reporters because
they know their activities are illegal. Slava
agreed to be interviewed but not to have his
full name disclosed.
Armed with primitive personal computers and -- given the lack of well-paying jobs
in Russia -- a lot of free time, Russians are
earning an international reputation for
hacking skills. In 1999, Russian hackers took
credit for a number of high-profile attacks
that disrupted Web sites operated by NATO
and the United States government. Last
year, CNN reported "coordinated, organized attacks" on Pentagon computers by
Russian hackers.
In January, a Russian hacker took credit
for the theft of 300,000 credit card numbers
from CD Universe, an online music store. In
April, five hackers were arrested in Moscow, accused of stealing credit card numbers. Last year, hackers broke into the
computers of Gazprom, the biggest company in Russia and the world's largest natural
gas company. The hackers briefly gained
control of the system that regulates the flow
of natural gas in pipelines, the police said.
"The recent increase in Russian hacking
is a lot like the increase of viruses that
accompanied the entrance of Russian programmers onto the world stage in the early
1990's and who also had few legitimate
outlets for their knowledge," said Pavel
Semyanov, a computer security expert at
St. Petersburg Polytech University and a
co-author of the book "Internet Attack,"
which is available only in Russian.
But most hacking in Russia has been
limited to vandalizing Web sites and mild
forms of online hooliganism, and some Russian computer experts complain that the
threat of Russian hackers has been exaggerated in the American press.
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For idle youth, a
subculture with a strong
allure.
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"It's the cold war mentality, and Americans are now obsessed with Russian hackers," said Daniil Dougaev, chief editor of
Internet.ru, a popular Russian Web publication. "If it is learned the hackers behind the
Pentagon job are, say, from Iceland, it probably won't grab headlines."
Mr. Semyanov said the threat of Russian
hackers was exaggerated by Western news
media. He disputed whether the Pentagon
attack had even taken place.
Russians have long had a reputation for
computer prowess. State-run technical
schools, primarily those in St. Petersburg,
produce highly regarded programmers, and
many Russian programmers find work with
American high-tech companies. But the
hackers themselves say that Russia's hackers usually have no formal training.
"I hardly knew anything about computers
up until two years ago," Slava said, "and
only began hacking one year ago. The best
hackers are those who are simply more
curious, more clever, more willing to understand how a system really works. It's rare,
at least in Russia, that those with a formal
computer education, especially in programming, are hackers."
For young people in Russia, a country
where Internet use is growing rapidly but
where there is still a frustrating lack of jobs,
hacking has become a subculture with a
strong allure. Local online charges run between 60 cents and $1.20 an hour, a prohibitive amount in a country where salaries
average about $50 a month.
In Russia, many of these young hackers
are interested in nothing more than stealing
passwords to get free Internet access, said
Boris Striglov, a police investigator in St.
Petersburg. Mr. Striglov worked on the case
of Vladimir Levin, a hacker who stole $10
million from Citibank over four months in
the summer of 1994.
"The vast majority of hackers," said
Dmitri Leonov, who wrote "Internet Attack" with Mr. Semyanov and founded
Hackzone.ru, a Web site popular with Russian hackers, "are teenagers who get their
hands on some hacking software.
As the
Web becomes more and more common in
Russia, we can expect more problems with
Russian hackers, not necessarily because
they are malicious, but because they have a
mischievous and childlike desire to understand thoroughly how these systems work."
Before his snowboarding accident, Slava
said, he never imagined that he would join
the growing ranks of Russia's hackers. Unable to work and forced to rely on his
parents, who have sales jobs and do not earn
much more than the average wage, Slava
borrowed money from his family and
friends for a Pentium 166 PC and an Internet hookup.
"My computer and the Internet have become my world," he said, looking around his
room at the posters of skiers and windsurfers that plaster the walls.
Slava's first attempt at hacking was just
over a year ago, when he downloaded some
software from a hacker Web site. "If I could
earn decent money as a computer specialist," he said, "I would not be doing this, and
would not mind paying for access, but, in
Russia, there are too many bright minds
and not enough work to go around."
Hackers have also turned to politics. Russia's war in Chechnya, for instance, was
fought not only on the ground and in the air,
but also in cyberspace. In January, the site
of a leading Russian news wire was hacked
into, and the site's usual fare was replaced
by a Chechen propaganda announcement
that said the Russian president-elect, Vladimir V. Putin, had been sentenced to death.
Some Russian computer experts say that
Russian agencies like the Federal Security
Service, or F.S.B., the successor to the
K.G.B., often employ hackers.
"There are organized groups of hackers
tied to the F.S.B., and pro-Chechen sites
have been hacked by such groups," said
Vladimir Veinstein, a 25-year-old computer
security specialist in St. Petersburg who
works for the Internet company Red Net.
"One man I know, who was caught committing a cybercrime, was given the choice of
either prison or cooperation with the F.S.B.,
and he went along."
In January, a pro-Chechen Web site, Kavkaz.org, was shut down by hackers working
for the F.S.B., Mr. Veinstein said. In March,
the computer system of an opposition newspaper in Moscow, Novaya Gazeta, was
hacked and a major part of one of its issues
was deleted just as the newspaper was to
publish an article about Mr. Putin's campaign financing.
Slava said that no one had offered -- or
threatened -- him with the opportunity to
perform that kind of computer work, but he
would consider it.
"For me, hacking is mostly sport," he
said. "But if someone offered me big money
to hack someone else's system, I'd give it
serious consideration."
