17 Aug 2016
A trial began this week in Federal District Court in Seattle, where a Russian man is charged with hacking into servers in order to steal credit card information. Roman Seleznev was originally indicted in 2011. He faces numerous felony counts of bank fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and computer hacking.
Although his first indictment came five years ago, he was in Russia at the time, and could not be arrested by U.S. agents. In 2014, however, he was on vacation in the Maldives, an island nation in the Indian Ocean. It is there that he was arrested, although some, including Russian officials, say he was kidnapped. In that regard, Seleznev is the son of a member of the Russian Parliament.
In any event, the case is interesting on a couple of levels. First, if the indictment is correct, Seleznev was responsible for amassing the credit card information of about 1.7 million people. He allegedly did so by hacking into the computer systems of hundreds of restaurants and businesses, many in Washington, D.C. and the surrounding areas. The size of the operation alone makes it noteworthy.
Another item we thought would be of interest is the manner in which the credit card information was allegedly stolen, and what was supposedly done with it. In this case, it is alleged that he hacked into the computer system of the retail businesses, and then installed malware designed to capture the card numbers. But just how do you turn that into dollars? Seleznev is accused of running web forums, using an alias, where hackers and others could purchase the stolen information for a price.
As we said, the trial has just begun, and is expected to last a couple of weeks. We anticipate numerous applications to the judge. They will likely claim that Seleznev’s computer was opened without a warrant, and that agents may have tampered with and/or altered its contents. If the defense prevails on that issue, it would present serious problems for the prosecutor, since much of their evidence appears to be what was (allegedly) found on Seleznev’s computer. However the case turns out, we haven’t heard the last of it.
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