John-ShepardAt least we got 'em.
It has been more than a year since the owner of a large Russian eSports/competitive gaming team, Dmitry 'ddd1ms' Smilianets, was arrested as part of a global operation by the FBI's cyber crimes unit. His team consisted of world-class players who were the best at games like League of Legends , Dota 2 and Counter-Strike .
But now he's in very big trouble. In fact, it has been revealed that he and his cronies are now part of the "largest hacking and data breach scheme case ever prosecuted in the US," as stated by attorney Paul Fishman. Smilianets and four other Russian and Ukrainian nationals have been charged with running a sophisticated hacking network, which resulted in the theft of at least 160 million debit and credit card numbers and hundreds of millions of lost dollars. Apparently, the suspects even sent each other IMs when they took control of corporate data; such as- "NASDAQ is owned." Oh yes…very mature. Smart, too.
Smilianets' laywer, Bruce Provda, said this is a "rather complex international charge of hacking" and the trial will be very long. The government alleges that Smilianets was the "information salesman. Well, whatever. So long as they're out of society.
Did this have something to do with the PSN hack?
It's possible, but I doubt it because of the space in timeline. However, I'm shocked that I never even knew of the initial arrest. It seems like it should have been big news. It's rather intelligent and simultaneously despicable.
I think that's why there's a public fascination with hackers. I remember when it all started way back with Angelina Jolie and the movie "Hackers" around the time the first wave of principled geniuses were getting arrested for just nosing around in private info.
Now it's all pretty destructive.
World,
It goes back further than that. War Games with Matthew Broderick came out in 1983 and Stephen Levy wrote, "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" back in 1984. See also "Cuckoo's Egg" by Clifford Stoll (1989), "Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier" by John Markoff and Katie Hafner (1991) and "The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier" by Bruce Sterling (1992).
I hope the guy gets hard labor for the rest of his life and see how he likes working for nothing. Some people have to work their *ss off just to get by and all the labor they perform is for nothing when someone steals from them.
yeah put em' away good for nothin theives the world's better off with out them. us hard workin honest people.
happy gaming =)