A few years ago, science fiction stories and movies predicted the future as a digitally managed world, where virtual reality was immersed into the physical world and where the most powerful organizations were directed by hackers and IT geniuses. We haven´t reached that point yet – or at least it´s not publicly known – but the super advanced state that movies tell us about is a scary picture.  We are living in a highly digitalized world, where cybercrime and Terminator style wars with drones are just around the corner.  Russia and the Ukraine are also leading the way in the push for technology, in a bad way.

Online crime cases in Russia and Ukraine are becoming increasingly complex. Russian cyber criminals are recognized for their hacking skills and they have been widely featured in the news lately. First there was the Target security breach, then the Tech Data attack at the beginning of this year. But these are not the only cases. According to information from the White House and U.S. govt, federal agents notified in 2013 more than 3,000 U.S. companies that their computer systems had been hacked.

Information has become not only a powerful tool for politics –Edward Snowden has been quite clear about this point- but it has also become the most profitable resource for criminals. Data is nowadays a better paid “good” than drugs, believe it or not. This fact has contributed to the development of highly organized networks of hackers, often connected with traditional crime groups such as drug cartels, mafias, and terrorist groups.  Information is power, and selling your data is big business.

Google and Facebook love when you search for information and share things online.  Why?  Because they in turn build their own profile about you, and proceed to sell your private information.

Hacking actually works a lot like the traditional commerce. As with regular goods and services, criminal services are available for purchase online. Malware packages or customized viruses are traded online every day, enabling the most unskilled hackers to launch fairly elaborated and advanced attacks. In the meantime, victims are still stuck in a web search, trying to find out what happened. As we said in a previous post on technology and online scamming, unless you are an IT expert with serious resources at your disposal, think twice before trying to beat a Russian cybercriminal at his own game.

Russian private investigators have expressed the warnings about this topic but have been widely ignored. Although companies have a clearer perspective about how much a cyber attack may cost, individuals have little interest in taking action to protect themselves. People don’t believe that their personal and financial information could be traded out in the black market, and carelessly share it online in social networks, or click on anything before stopping to think what it is.

While people and companies are being ripped off, politicians are trying to take advantage of the situation. Under the current circumstances in the Ukraine, senators in the U.S. are trying to exchange hackers for financial aid, claiming justice. The question is, will these hackers really be arrested or are they being recruited for the NSA, in exchange for Russia´s protection to Snowden?

C. Wright
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