Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion Dollar Cyber Crime Underground by Kevin Poulsen

he could find—not really sure what he was looking for.
    On a whim, he cracked Kimi’s computer and that of her boyfriend, with whom she’d moved in. Max contemplated plundering her address book and sending out a mass e-mail in her name, detailing how she betrayed him. He thought everyone should know that Kimi’s new life was built on a foundation of infidelity.
    He didn’t go through with it. He had Charity now. Kimi had movedon, and nothing would be gained by trying to shame her, he realized. Shortly thereafter, he signed the divorce papers.
    Returning to his work, he began performing Google searches for guidance in his targeting: What were other fraudsters doing? How were they monetizing stolen data? That was when he discovered where the real criminal action was online: two websites called CarderPlanet and Shadowcrew.

Script’s Twenty-Dollar Dumps
     
    n the spring of 2001, some 150 Russian-speaking computer criminals convened a summit at a restaurant in the Ukraine port city of Odessa to brainstorm the launch of a revolutionary website. Present were Roman Vega, a thirty-seven-year-old man who sold counterfeit credit cards to the underground through his online storefront BOA Factory; a cybercrook known as “King Arthur”; and the man who would emerge as their leader, a Ukrainian credit card seller known by the handle “Script.”
    The discussion was sparked by the success of a UK-hosted website erected in 2000 called Counterfeit Library, which solved one of the fundamental weaknesses of conducting criminal business in IRC chat rooms, where the wisdom and experience of years of crime vanished into the air as soon as the chat was over. Founded by a handful of Western cybercrooks, Counterfeit Library collected underground tutorials onto a single website and attached an online discussion forum where identity thieves could gather to swap tips and buy and sell “novelty” identification cards—a euphemism distilled from the same spirit in which hookers go on “dates.”
    Counterfeit Library had more in common with the electronic bulletin board systems of the pre-Web days than with IRC. Members could post in permanent discussion threads and build personal reputations and brands. As criminals around the globe discovered this patch of dry land in the murky ephemeral sea of underground commerce, the site collectedhundreds, then thousands, of members from across North America and Europe. They were identity thieves, hackers, phishers, spammers, currency counterfeiters, credit card forgers, all of whom had been slaving away in their apartments and warehouses, blind, until now, to the vastness of their secret brotherhood.
    The carders of Eastern Europe had watched Counterfeit Library with envy. Now they wanted to apply the same alchemy to their own underground.
    In June 2001, the result of the Odessa summit was unveiled: the International Carders Alliance, or simply Carderplanet.com, a tightly organized reinvention of Counterfeit Library catering to the underworld of the former Soviet empire. While Counterfeit Library was a freewheeling discussion board and BOA Factory a straightforward storefront operation, CarderPlanet was a disciplined online bazaar, charged with the excitement of a commodities exchange.
    Unabashed in its purpose, the site adopted the nomenclature of the Italian Mafia for its rigid hierarchy. A registered user was a “sgarrista”—a soldier, without special privileges. One step up was a “giovane d’honore,” who helped moderate the discussions under the supervision of a “capo.” At the top of the food chain was CarderPlanet’s don, Script.
    Russian-speaking vendors flocked to the new site to offer an array of products and services. Credit card numbers were a staple, naturally, but only the beginning. Some sellers specialized in the more valuable “full infos”—a credit card number accompanied by the owner’s name, address, Social Security number, and mother’s maiden name, all for around