In an apparent rare instance, the Russian police busted a hacker gang in Moscow on Tuesday. This gang had managed to generate in excess of $30 million a month with a rather clever scheme.
From RT:
Russian police have detained ten people who managed to get one billion roubles, approximately $30 million, through a clever scheme involving a computer virus, blackmail and SMS billing.
Website Lifenews.ru reported on Tuesday that ten members of the criminal group had been detained in Moscow. Operatives of the city police directorate for fighting economic crimes have told journalists that the suspects created a computer virus that blocked all programs on the users’ computers and put a pornographic picture on the screen together with a demand to send an SMS to a certain number to receive a code that would supposedly unblock the computer.
I’m rather curious to see if this is in fact a new trend with the Russian police forces or if the sheer volume of cash made it impossible to ignore.
What are your thoughts?
(Image used under CC from Paul Goyette)