http://english.hk.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/technology/afp/article.html?s=hke/headlines/010524/technology/afp/Russian_police_bust_63-year-old_computer_hacker.html Thursday, May 24 10:26 PM SGT MOSCOW, May 24 (AFP) Russian police have dealt a serious blow to the popular image of computer hacking as a teenage pass-time by uncovering a ring of mature online fraudsters that even includes a 63-year-old, the interior ministry said Thursday. The well-organised fraudsters, who had already stolen 10,000 dollars and were planning to divert another 30,000 dollars, were "not teenage hackers, but serious professional criminals," said Alexander Solovyov of the ministry's "Department R" which is charged with fighting hi-tech crimes. The ringleader was a former policeman in his mid-40s and one of his henchmen was a 63-year-old retired computer programmer, according to Solovyov. After stealing 300 foreign credit cards, the hackers opened their own Internet store, to which they transferred money from the stolen cards under the guise of legitimate online transactions. Police arrested three out the group's five members after a tip-off from Cyberplat, Russia's main digital payment company, which had begun to suspect the online store's business operations, Solovyov said. Dmitry Chepugov, the head of Department R's Moscow office, admitted that the amount of money stolen was relatively low, but said this was because the arrests had been "a rare example of a successful police operation" to prevent online crimes. The hackers could face up to 10 years in jail if convicted under Russian law, Chepugov said. He said police estimates reckon computer theft in Moscow costs the state 12 to 15 million dollars a month. Department R opened 436 criminal cases in Russia in 2000, four times as many as in 1999, and the rate of hi-tech crimes tripled last year, with the annual number of cases rising as high as 20 times over the past three years. However, Russian legislation is completely unsuited to fighting computer-related crimes, and Department R's has scant resources compared to those of the hackers, Chepugov complained. Department R was founded in 1998 and its Moscow branch opened in September 2000, but Chepugov declined to tell journalists how many operatives it employed, adding that such information was a "state secret." ISN is hosted by SecurityFocus.com --- To unsubscribe email isn-unsubscribeat_private
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