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For all its disadvantages, the former Soviet Union had one hugely overlooked advantage: it kept hackers, crackers, and virus writers confined inside the country by restricting their access to the Internet.

A decade later, Internet penetration is booming in the region, particularly in Russia, and viruses are epidemic. In fact, Russians are linked to some of the nastiest viruses the technology world has ever experienced: Bagel, Mydoom, and Netsky, to name just a few.

Security experts warn that the situation is likely to worsen as hacking, cracking, and virus writing shift from being a mischievous hobby of young kids to a lucrative occupation of skilled professionals working hand-in-hand with hardened criminals.

"The influence of organized crime in this area is steadily growing," says Alexander Gostev, a security expert with Kaspersky Labs in Moscow. "We are now seeing more malicious programs written by professionals, and not by script kiddies as we experienced two to three years ago."

DK Matai, chairman of Mi2g, a London-based security service provider, agrees. "The Mafia, which has been using the Internet as a communication vehicle for some time, is using it increasingly as a resource for carrying out mass identity theft and financial fraud," he says.

Easy Money

The motive is obvious: money--in some cases, big money, which fuels other traditional Mafia activities, such as drug smuggling and prostitution.

"There is more of a financial incentive now for hackers and crackers as well as for virus writers to write for money and not just for glory or some political motive," says one former hacker, known as 3APA3A, who is currently employed as a security expert.

That view contrasts sharply with the situation several years ago when hacking had another status in Russia. In a message published on GlobalSecurity.org, one former hacker-turned-teacher wrote that during his childhood, he and a couple of friends hacked programs and distributed them for free. "It was like our donation to society," he wrote. "It was a form of honor; [we were] like Robin Hood bringing programs to people."

Today, hundreds or even possibly thousands of skilled Russians desperate for cash are scouring the Internet looking for security vulnerabilities in the computer networks of companies, particularly in the U.S. and Europe. They are creating worms and Trojans for stealing credit card and other financial information, or turning inflected computers into zombie hosts to establish illegal spam farms, or extorting money by threatening companies with a distributed denial-of-service attack if they don't pay. And more.

Indeed, if there were a happy haven for hackers these days, it would be Russia, according to Ken Dunham, director of malicious code at iDefense in Reston, Virgina. "In Russia, perhaps more than in most other countries right now, hacking magazines and software are sold on the streets of Moscow," he says. "It's not a secret as you'd expect, but right out there in the open."

Moscow even has a hacking school: Civil Hackers' School.

Perfect Breeding

The combination of over-educated and under-employed specialists has made Russia an ideal breeding ground for hackers. The hacker community was infused with professionals following a financial crash in 1998 that left many computer programmers and business people financially destroyed and out of work. Even today, the country continues to churn out plenty of students who excel at mathematics and physics, but who struggle to find work.

"Russian criminals offer students money to spend time with them to carry out illegitimate activities in return for cash," Matai says. "They're active not only in schools and universities, but also through their own recruitment centers where they siphon off talent for organized criminal purposes, which include selling services to groups in other countries, such as Islamic hackers."

Another factor making Russia an even more fertile nest for hackers is the growing number of residents now able to access the Internet. The Ministry for Communications projects their numbers to grow from 6 percent of the population (around 148 million) in 2003 to 15 percent by 2005. Eleven million people currently use the Internet, while around 9 million own a computer.

Cybercrime doubled in 2003 to 11,000 reported cases, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The most frequent crimes were illegal access to computer information, distribution of pirated software, and cyberattacks on financial institutions.