On Dec. 18, 2013, KrebsOnSecurity broke the information that U.S. retail large Goal was battling a wide-ranging laptop intrusion that compromised greater than 40 million buyer fee playing cards over the earlier month. The malware used within the Goal breach included the textual content string “Rescator,” which additionally was the deal with chosen by the cybercriminal who was promoting all the playing cards stolen from Goal prospects. Ten years later, KrebsOnSecurity has uncovered new clues in regards to the real-life identification of Rescator.
Rescator, promoting a brand new batch of playing cards stolen in a 2014 breach at P.F. Chang’s.
Shortly after breaking the Goal story, KrebsOnSecurity reported that Rescator gave the impression to be a hacker from Ukraine. Efforts to substantiate my reporting with that particular person ended once they declined to reply questions, and after I declined to simply accept a bribe of $10,000 to not run my story.
That reporting was primarily based on clues from an early Russian cybercrime discussion board through which a hacker named Rescator — utilizing the identical profile picture that Rescator was identified to make use of on different boards — claimed to have initially been generally known as “Helkern,” the nickname chosen by the administrator of a cybercrime discussion board known as Darklife.
KrebsOnSecurity started revisiting the analysis into Rescator’s real-life identification in 2018, after the U.S. Division of Justice unsealed an indictment that named a unique Ukrainian man as Helkern.
It might be useful to first recap why Rescator is regarded as so intently tied to the Goal breach. For starters, the textual content string “Rescator” was present in a few of the malware used within the Goal breach. Investigators would later decide {that a} variant of the malware used within the Goal breach was utilized in 2014 to steal 56 million fee playing cards from Dwelling Depot prospects. And as soon as once more, playing cards stolen within the Dwelling Depot breach have been offered solely at Rescator’s retailers.
On Nov. 25, 2013, two days earlier than Goal mentioned the breach formally started, Rescator might be seen in instantaneous messages hiring one other discussion board member to confirm 400,000 fee playing cards that Rescator claimed have been freshly stolen.
By the primary week of December, 2013, Rescator’s on-line retailer — rescator[.]la — was promoting greater than six million fee card information stolen from Goal prospects. Previous to the Goal breach, Rescator had principally offered a lot smaller batches of stolen card and identification knowledge, and the web site allowed cybercriminals to automate the sending of fraudulent wire transfers to cash mules primarily based in Lviv, Ukraine.
Lastly, there may be some honor amongst thieves, and within the market for stolen fee card knowledge it’s thought of poor kind to promote a batch of playing cards as “yours” in case you are merely reselling playing cards offered to you by a third-party card vendor or thief. When severe stolen fee card store distributors want to talk {that a} batch of playing cards is uniquely their handiwork or that of their fast crew, they consult with it as “our base.” And Rescator was fairly clear in his ads that these tens of millions of playing cards have been obtained firsthand.
FLASHBACK
The brand new clues about Rescator’s identification got here into focus once I revisited the reporting round an April 2013 story right here that recognized the writer of the OSX Flashback Trojan, an early malware pressure that shortly unfold to greater than 650,000 Mac computer systems worldwide in 2012.
That story in regards to the Flashback writer was attainable as a result of a supply had obtained a Internet browser authentication cookie for a founding member of a Russian cybercrime discussion board known as BlackSEO. Anybody in possession of that cookie may then browse the invite-only BlackSEO discussion board and browse the person’s personal messages with out having to log in.
BlackSEO.com VIP member “Mavook” tells discussion board admin Ika in a non-public message that he’s the Flashback writer.
The official proprietor of that BlackSEO person cookie glided by the nickname Ika, and Ika’s personal messages on the discussion board confirmed he was shut mates with the Flashback writer. On the time, Ika additionally was the administrator of Pustota[.]pw — a closely-guarded Russian discussion board that counted amongst its members a few of the world’s most profitable and established spammers and malware writers.
For a few years, Ika held a key place at one among Russia’s largest Web service suppliers, and his (principally glowing) fame as a dependable supplier of internet hosting to the Russian cybercrime group gave him an encyclopedic information about almost each main participant in that scene on the time.
The story on the Flashback writer featured redacted screenshots that have been taken from Ika’s BlackSEO account (see picture above). The day after that story ran, Ika posted a farewell handle to his mates, expressing shock and bewilderment over the obvious compromise of his BlackSEO account.
In a prolonged publish on April 4, 2013 titled “I DON’T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING,” Ika advised Pustota discussion board members he was so spooked by current occasions that he was closing the discussion board and quitting the cybercrime enterprise completely. Ika recounted how the Flashback story had come the identical week that rival cybercriminals tried to “dox” him (their dox named the improper particular person, however included a few of Ika’s extra guarded identities).
“It’s no secret that karma farted in my path,” Ika mentioned at the start of his publish. Unbeknownst to Ika on the time, his Pustota discussion board additionally had been utterly hacked that week, and a duplicate of its database shared with this writer.
A Google translated model of the farewell publish from Ika, the administrator of Pustota, a Russian language cybercrime discussion board targeted on botnets and spam. Click on to enlarge.
Ika mentioned the 2 people who tried to dox him did so on an much more guarded Russian language discussion board — DirectConnection[.]ws, maybe essentially the most unique Russian cybercrime group ever created. New candidates of this discussion board needed to pay a non-refundable deposit, and obtain vouches by three established cybercriminals already on the discussion board. Even when one managed to steal (or guess) a person’s DirectConnection password, the login web page couldn’t be reached except the customer additionally possessed a particular browser certificates that the discussion board administrator gave solely to authorized members.
In no unsure phrases, Ika declared that Rescator glided by the nickname MikeMike on DirectConnection:
“I didn’t wish to deliver any of this to actual life. Particularly since I knew the patron of the clowns – particularly Pavel Vrublevsky. Sure, I do state with confidence that the person with the nickname Rescator a.ok.a. MikeMike along with his associate Pipol have been Pavel Vrublevsky’s puppets for a very long time.”
Pavel Vrublevsky is a convicted cybercriminal who grew to become well-known because the CEO of the Russian e-payments firm ChronoPay, which specialised in facilitating on-line funds for quite a lot of “high-risk” companies, together with playing, pirated Mp3 information, rogue antivirus software program and “male enhancement” tablets.
As detailed in my 2014 ebook Spam Nation, Vrublevsky not-so-secretly ran a pharmacy affiliate spam program known as Rx-Promotion, which paid spammers and virus writers to blast out tens of billions of junk emails promoting generic Viagra and managed prescribed drugs like ache reduction medicines. A lot of my reporting on Vrublevsky’s cybercrime empire got here from a number of years value of inside ChronoPay emails and paperwork that have been leaked on-line in 2010 and 2011.
Pavel Vrublevsky’s former Fb profile photograph.
ZAXVATMIRA
In 2014, KrebsOnSecurity realized from a trusted supply near the Goal breach investigation that the person MikeMike on DirectConnection — the identical account that Ika mentioned belonged to Rescator — used the e-mail handle “zaxvatmira@gmail.com.”
On the time, KrebsOnSecurity couldn’t join that e mail handle to something or anybody. Nevertheless, a current search on zaxvatmira@gmail.com on the breach monitoring service Constella Intelligence returns only one outcome: An account created in November 2010 on the web site searchengines[.]ru underneath the deal with “r-fac1.”
A search on “r-fac1” at cyber intelligence agency Intel 471 revealed that this person’s introductory publish on searchengines[.]ru marketed musictransferonline[.]com, an associates program that paid folks to drive site visitors to websites that offered pirated music information for pennies apiece.
In accordance with leaked ChronoPay emails from 2010, this area was registered and paid for by ChronoPay. These missives additionally present that in August 2010 Vrublevsky approved a fee of ~$1,200 for a multi-user license of an Intranet service known as MegaPlan.
ChronoPay used the MegaPlan service to assist handle the sprawling initiatives that Vrublevsky referred to internally as their “black” fee processing operations, together with pirated tablets, porn, Mp3s, and faux antivirus merchandise. ChronoPay workers used their MegaPlan accounts to trace fee disputes, order volumes, and promoting partnerships for these high-risk applications.
Borrowing a web page from the Quentin Tarantino film Reservoir Canine, the staff adopted nicknames like “Mr. Kink,” “Mr. Heppner,” and “Ms. Nati.” Nevertheless, in a basic failure of operational safety, many of those workers had their MegaPlan account messages robotically forwarded to their actual ChronoPay e mail accounts.
A display screen shot of the org chart from ChronoPay’s MegaPlan Intranet system.
When ChronoPay’s inside emails have been leaked in 2010, the username and password for its MegaPlan subscription have been nonetheless working and legitimate. An inside person listing for that subscription included the private (non-ChronoPay) e mail handle tied to every worker Megaplan nickname. That listing itemizing mentioned the e-mail handle zaxvatmira@gmail.com was assigned to the pinnacle of the Media/Mp3 division for ChronoPay, pictured on the prime left of the organizational chart above as “Babushka Vani and Koli.”
[Author’s note: I initially overlooked the presence of the email address zaxvatmira@gmail.com in my notes because it did not show up in text searches of my saved emails, files or messages. I rediscovered it recently when a text search for zaxvatmira@gmail.com on my Mac found the address in a screenshot of the ChronoPay MegaPlan interface.]
The nickname two rungs down from “Babushka” within the ChronoPay org chart is “Lev Tolstoy,” which the MegaPlan service confirmed was picked by somebody who used the e-mail handle v.zhabukin@freefrog-co-ru.
ChronoPay’s emails present that this Freefrog e mail handle belongs to a Vasily Borisovich Zhabykin from Moscow. The Russian enterprise monitoring web site rusprofile[.]ru studies that Zhabykin is or was the supervisor or proprietor of three Russian organizations, together with one known as JSC Sizzling Spot.
[Author’s note: The word “babushka” means “grandma” in Russian, and it could be that this nickname is a nod to the ChronoPay CEO’s wife, Vera. The leaked ChronoPay emails show that Vera Vrublevsky managed a group of hackers working with their media division, and was at least nominally in charge of MP3 projects for ChronoPay. Indeed, in messages exposed by the leaked ChronoPay email cache, Zhabykin stated that he was “directly subordinate” to Mrs. Vrublevsky].
CYBERCRIME HOTSPOT
JSC Sizzling Spot is fascinating as a result of its co-founder is one other ChronoPay worker: 37-year-old Mikhail “Mike” Shefel. A Fb profile for Mr. Shefel says he’s or was vp of fee programs at ChronoPay. Nevertheless, the final replace on that profile is from 2018, when Shefel seems to have legally modified his final title.
Archive.org reveals that Sizzling Spot’s web site — myhotspot[.]ru — offered quite a lot of consulting companies, together with IT safety assessments, code and system audits, and e mail advertising. The earliest recorded archive of the Sizzling Spot web site listed three shoppers on its homepage, together with ChronoPay and Freefrog.
ChronoPay inside emails present that Freefrog was one among its funding initiatives that facilitated the sale of pirated Mp3 information. Rusprofile[.]ru studies that Freefrog’s official firm title — JSC Freefrog — is included by a thinly-documented entity primarily based within the Seychelles known as Impex Consulting Ltd., and it’s unclear who its true house owners are.
Nevertheless, a search at DomainTools.com on the cellphone quantity listed on the homepage of myhotspot[.]ru (74957809554) reveals that quantity is related to eight domains.
Six of these domains are some variation of FreeFrog. One other area registered to that cellphone quantity is bothunter[.]me, which included a copyright credit score to “Sizzling Spot 2011.” On the annual Russian Web Week IT conference in Moscow in 2012, Mr. Shefel gave a brief presentation about bothunter, which he described as a service he designed to establish inauthentic (bot) accounts on Russian social media networks.
Apparently, one among r-fac1’s first posts to Searchengines[.]ru a yr earlier noticed this person requesting assist from different members who had entry to giant numbers of hacked social media accounts. R-fac1 advised discussion board members that he was solely trying to make use of these accounts to publish innocent hyperlinks and feedback to the followers of the hacked profiles, and his publish instructed he was testing one thing.
“Good afternoon,” r-fac1 wrote on Dec. 20, 2010. “I’m on the lookout for folks with their very own not-recently-registered accounts on boards, (aside from search) Social networks, Twitter, blogs, their web sites. Duties, relying in your accounts, publish textual content and a hyperlink, generally only a hyperlink. Most frequently the subject is chatter, rest, dialogue. Posting my hyperlinks in your profiles, in your partitions. A separate provide for folks with a big set of contacts in instantaneous messengers to attempt to use viral advertising.”
Neither Mr. Shefel nor Mr. Zhabykin responded to requests for remark.
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Mr. Zhabykin quickly moved on to greater ventures, co-founding a cryptocurrency trade primarily based in Moscow’s monetary heart known as Suex. In September 2021, Suex earned the excellence of turning into the primary crypto agency to be sanctioned by the U.S. Division of the Treasury, which successfully blocked Suex from the worldwide monetary system. The Treasury alleged Suex helped to course of tens of millions in prison transactions, together with the proceeds of quite a few ransomware assaults.
“I don’t perceive how I acquired blended up on this,” Zhabykin advised The New York Instances in 2021. Zhabykin mentioned Suex, which is registered within the Czech Republic, was principally a failure and had performed solely a half dozen or so transactions since 2019.
The Russian enterprise monitoring service Rusprofile says Zhabykin is also the proprietor of an organization primarily based in the UK known as RideWithLocal; the corporate’s web site says it focuses on arranging excursions for excessive sports activities, together with snowboarding, snowboarding, browsing and parasailing. Photographs from the RideWithLocal Fb web page present helicopters dropping snowboarders and skiers atop some pretty steep mountains.
A screenshot from the Fb web page of RideWithLocal.
Constella Intelligence discovered a cached copy of a now-deleted LinkedIn profile for Mr. Zhabykin, who described himself as a “sporttech/fintech specialist and mentor.”
“I create services worldwide, specializing in innovation and international challenges,” his LinkedIn profile mentioned. “I’ve began my profession in 2002 and since then I labored in Moscow, completely different areas of Russia, together with Siberia and in Finland, Brazil, United Kingdom, Sri Lanka. Over the past 15 years I contributed to many superb merchandise within the following industries: sports activities, ecology, sport tech, fin tech, digital funds, massive knowledge, telecommunications, pulp and paper trade, wooden processing and journey. My specialities are Product improvement, Mentorship, Technique and Enterprise improvement.”
Rusprofile studies that Mikhail Borisovich Shefel is related to a minimum of eight present or now-defunct corporations in Russia, together with Dengi IM (Cash IM), Web Capital, Web Lawyer, Web 2, Zao Sizzling Spot, and (my private favourite) an entity included in 2021 known as “All of the Cash within the World.”
Constella Intelligence discovered a number of official paperwork for Mr. Shefel that got here from hacked Russian cellphone, vehicle and residence information. They point out Mr. Shefel is the registrant of a black Porsche Cayenne (Plate:X537SR197) and a Mercedes (Plate:P003PX90). These car information present Mr. Shefel was born on Might 28, 1986.
Rusprofile reveals that sooner or later close to the top of 2018, Shefel modified his final title to Lenin. DomainTools studies that in 2018, Mr. Shefel’s firm Web 2 LLC registered the area title Lenin[.]me. This now-defunct service offered bodily USSR-era Ruble notes that bear the picture of Vladimir Lenin, the founding father of the Soviet Union.
In the meantime, Pavel Vrublevsky stays imprisoned in Russia, awaiting trial on fraud prices levied towards the fee firm CEO in March 2022. Authorities allege Vrublevsky operated a number of fraudulent SMS-based fee schemes. Additionally they accused Vrublevsky of facilitating cash laundering for Hydra, the most important Russian darknet market. Hydra trafficked in unlawful medication and monetary companies, together with cryptocurrency tumbling for cash laundering, trade companies between cryptocurrency and Russian rubles, and the sale of falsified paperwork and hacking companies.
In 2013, Vrublevsky was sentenced to 2.5 years in a Russian penal colony for convincing one among his prime spammers and botmasters to launch a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assault towards a ChronoPay competitor that shut down the ticketing system for the state-owned Aeroflot airline.
Following his launch, Vrublevsky started engaged on a brand new digital funds platform primarily based in Hong Kong known as HPay Ltd (a.ok.a. Hong Kong Processing Company). HPay seems to have had a large number of shoppers that have been operating schemes which bamboozled folks with pretend lotteries and prize contests.
KrebsOnSecurity sought touch upon this analysis from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Secret Service, each of which have been concerned within the Goal breach investigation over time. The FBI declined to remark. The Secret Service declined to substantiate or dispute any of the findings, however mentioned it’s nonetheless fascinated about listening to from anybody who may need extra info.
“The U.S. Secret Service doesn’t touch upon any open investigation and gained’t affirm or deny the accuracy in any reporting associated to a prison method,” the company mentioned in a written assertion. “Nevertheless, When you have any info referring to the topics referenced on this article, please contact the U.S. Secret Service at mostwanted@usss.dhs.gov. The Secret Service pays a reward for info resulting in the arrest of cybercriminals.”
