MOSCOW – Russians, as a nationality, were the best hackers in 2011, grabbing a $4.5 billion share of the global cyber crime market, double what they stole the year before.

And we?re talking a big worldwide black market for purloined credit card numbers, intellectual property, and just plain cash, $12.5 billion last year, says Moscow-based Group-IB, a cyber security services firm working mainly with the Russian government and banks to help reduce online fraud.

Earlier this year, Facebook blew the cover off the malware gang Koobface. All five of their members were Russians from St. Petersburg. Eugene Kapersky, the CEO of software security firm Kaspersky Lab, also based in Moscow, said that the Koobface gang had become millionaires thanks to their hacking skills.

?The cybercrime market originating from Russia costs the global economy billions of dollars every year,? said Ilya Sachkov, Group-IB?s CEO. ?Although the Russian government has taken some very positive steps, we think it needs to go further by changing existing law enforcement practices, establishing proper international cooperation and ultimately improving the number of solved computer crimes.?

The word ?hacking? can cause tempers to flare up to 120 degrees or more among hard core computer geeks. Not all hacking is intolerable, or illegal. But a lot of it is, and the Russian computer geniuses walk the red carpet within the international hacker community.

On the A-list of Russia?s multi-million dollar spammers and online fraudsters include the talents of Koobface members Stanislav Avdeyko (aka leDed); Alexander Koltyshev (Floppy), Anton Korotchenko (KrotReal), Roman P. Koturbach (PoMuc), Svyatoslav Polichuck (PsycoMan). That?s just the now defunct Koobface posse.

There?s also Vladislav Khorokhorin (aka BadB), the 30 year old Russian who lived in Israel and ran the online stores Dumps.name and BadB.biz specializing in sale of compromised data of bank card users. He?s been at it for more than 8 years on the front lines of credit card fraud.

On August 7, 2010, BadB was arrested by French border agents at the airport in Nice while waiting to board a flight to Moscow. Khorokhorin was charged with aggravated fraud and theft. If found guilty on both charges, he can face up to 12 years in prison. Additionally, each charge carries with it a fine of up to $250,000, cutting into the millions he made hacking computer systems. Presently, Khorokhorin is held in custody in France. American authorities are doing everything they can for his extradition to the U.S.

His lawyers at Bukh Law Firm in New York City is headed by Khorokhorin?s personal attorney Arkadiy Bukh, who also reps Oleg Nikolayenko, another alleged cybercriminal.

Oleg Nikolayenko is also known as Mega-D in the underground internet scene. He is also known as the King of Spam, which has the 25 year old operating in a market Group-IB estimates to be around $830 million out of Russia alone.

The FBI arrested Oleg Nikolayenko in Las Vegas in November 2010 on the charges of violating the CAN-SPAM Act, an anti-spam law in the United States. Nikolayenko?s arrest was preceded by the arrests of two American spammers, Jody Smith and Lance Atkinson, who provided the FBI agents with key information regarding Nikolayenko?s criminal activities selling illegal drugs and fake pharmaceutical goods.

Another Russian hacker, Yevgeniy Anikin, 27, was worth an estimated $9.5 million thanks to his skills at funneling Royal Bank of Scotland accounts into his own private account. He is now serving a five year prison term.

From Eugene Kaspersky?s point of view, hackers and cyber criminals are one of the same. And at some point, they will destroy the internet. ?We will need two internets. One that is safe, and the one we have now, which is becoming less safe every day,? he said during a conference in Cancun in February.

Traditional crime syndicates are beginning to organize the previously disorganized Russian cybercrime market. In addition, these crime syndicates are beginning to work more closely together, sharing compromised data, botnets, and cashing schemes, Group-IB said in a 32 page report released on Tuesday titled ?State and Trend of the Russian Digital Crime Market.?

They found that in 2011, the largest type of Russian cybercrime was online fraud valued at $942 million; followed by spam at $830 million; cybercrime to cybercrime, or C2C (including services for anonymization and sale of traffic, exploits, malware, and loaders) at $230 million; and Denial of Service attacks, or DDoS, valued at $130 million.

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