Is It Really The Russian Mafia?

By | March 17, 2004

TechNewsWorld, in an article entitled “Worm Variants Part of Russian Mafia Extortion Scheme”, quotes Gartner research director Richard Stiennon told TechNewsWorld as saying of the recent spate of computer worms: “the real intent of the dueling viruses is to deny site availability to online gaming companies and other sites that have not complied with Russian mobsters’ demands”. But is it? And who are these ‘mobsters’?

Stiennon is quoted as saying, “The worm writers this time around are really cyber criminals in Russia. They’re using [the worms] to recruit bots (compromised computers) to launch denial-of-service attacks, mostly against online gaming sites, after failing to extort large payments from the sites.”

Unfortunately there’s no further evidence provided about just who these mobsters are. I’m willing to believe that some Russians are behind it, and I’d love to see some evidence that online casinos are being extorted, but I’m less willing to believe it’s the Russian Mafia (or mob). In Russia the mafia are a quite distinct — and very powerful — part of the establishment, but they’re not quite the same thing as the range of individuals, and loose-knit groups, that populate Russia’s online world.

This kind of report has been doing the rounds for at least a year (The Russian Mafia were also suspected of being behind the October 2000 assault on Microsoft’s servers). I’m not saying it’s wrong, but I think those who utter it have a responsibility to produce more evidence than we’ve seen so far.

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