Cyber Risks · Krebs on Security

Pharma Wars: Paying for Prosecution

Summary: Leaked chat logs published by Krebs on Security indicate that ChronoPay co-founder Igor Gusev paid Russian law enforcement to pursue a criminal case against Igor "Engel" Artimovich, a hacker Gusev says his former partner Pavel Vrublevsky hired to run DDoS attacks. In a chat dated Sept. 26, 2010, Gusev describes paying $50,000 for Engel's case - $20,000 for forensics and $30,000 to speed up the start of the criminal case - and frames the fight with Vrublevsky as a war in which "any war costs money, resources and nerve cells."

Bottom line: The two men behind ChronoPay, Glavmed, SpamIt and Rx-Promotion were paying both hackers and investigators, which means the criminal case against one alleged attacker was financed by his rival rather than driven by the state.

Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗

Topics
Data Breaches
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