NESTA Crime Online - University of Brighton Repository

Russian groups have also started to specialise in Denial of Service (DoS) attacks,
92 93
particularly on online gambling sites.
The foray into cybercrime has not been designed as a replacement for more traditional
forms of organised crime. It remains unclear which brand of activity is more important
to the enduring prosperity of Russian organised crime and indeed the inter-relationship
between the two strands. Given the low overhead profits associated with cybercrime
against high overheads associated with traditional organised crime, cybercrime is a
necessary endeavour to maintain the social and political benefits that accrue from the
94, 95
more visible and high profile criminal areas.
The amount of financial information procured by Russian organised crime groups is
thought to be massive. Much of it is stored covertly on unsuspecting servers across the
world. 96 Considerable though the impact has been on individual current account and
credit card holders, these victims are thought to represent only about 1 per cent of the
total information that is held globally and illegally. 97 Quite apart from the implications for
the future, as and when this information does enter the financial domain, its very
existence presents the organised crime group decision makers with an interesting choice
regarding use. Effectively, at this juncture, they have opted to sell the information
rather than use it directly, in order to avoid being at the point of crime. For example,
91 Carr, J., (18 th December 2007), ‘Finjan: Chinese Cybercrime networks fill void left by Russian Business
Network, SC Magazine, www.scmagazineus.com/Finjan-Chinese-Cybercrime-networks-fill-void-left-by-Russian-
Business-Network/article/100002/, accessed 3 rd December 2008.
92 The actual ransoms are generally not large and usually are less than what the site would lose if service were
denied for any longer than a week. Russian Mafia target online gambling sites, OnLine Casino,
www.onlinecasinonews.com/ocnv2_1/article/Article.asp?id=4460, accessed 3 rd December 2008.
93 Successful Russian attempts to compromise IT networks in Georgia and Estonia point to the potency of DoS
as a weapon of war. The techniques that were used were neither complex nor, allegedly, overseen by central
government. In the case of Georgia, the campaign was initiated by Russian nationalists who posted the
relevant software on websites, which could be downloaded by anyone so inclined to contribute to a flood of
bogus requests to an Internet server that culminated in a ‘Distributed Denial of Service’. (6 th -12 th December
2008), Marching off to Cyberwar, The Economist (Technology Quarterly), p.18.
94 Interview with Colin Whittaker, Head of Security, APACS, London, 30 th July 2008 and, 14 th October 2008.
95 As Misha Glenny’s recent book consistently reflects, not all crime is about money and wealth; it is also about
relative power, position and social advantage. Glenny, M., (2008), McMafia: Crime Without Frontiers, (Random
House, London), p.426.
96 Interview with Colin Whittaker, Head of Security, APACS, London, 30 th July 2008.
97 Interview with Tim Warner, Sales director and Country Manager, Finjan, Brighton, November 2008.
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