Every fourth hacker works for intelligence agencies

Using imprisonment threat as an argument of influence, FBI and secret service of the USA created army of informants from online criminals. According to data of Eric Corley, publisher "2600: the quarterly hacker", a quarter of all hackers of the USA are taken on service by federal authorities.

Governmental bodies of the USA so thoroughly got into the hidden world of computer hackers, thanks to efforts of FBI and secret service, that it is penetrated by paranoia and mistrust now. By investigation of Guardian it is established that about one of four hackers secretly informs intelligence agencies on the fellows.

Cyberdivisions of a polition achieved such success in coercion to cooperation of online criminals, by means of threats of long terms of imprisonment that they managed to create the whole army of informants in hacker community.

In some cases, as the markets for sale of the stolen certificates and credit card numbers malefactors used illegal forums which were under control of the hackers deserters acting on FBI. In other cases, secret FBI agents under the guise of "crankcases" - the hackers specializing in theft of documents - undertook management of such forums, using the intelligence information capable to define dozens of people for a grid.

In network of informers of FBI now about 25% of hackers of the USA, are eyes and ears of secret services, considers Eric Corley, publishing "2600: quarterly hacker". "It was promoted threat of severe penalty for partnership and relative inexperience concerning the law moreover the fact that many hackers are very sensitive to intimidation", - Corley in Guardian interview told.

"It conducts to very intense relations, - John Young managing the website depositary of classified documents Cryptome through Wikileaks told. - There are tens and dozens of hackers bribed by people who trusted them".

The most known example of such phenomenon - Adrian Lamo, the condemned hacker who was an informant of Bradley Manning suspected of transfer of classified documents of WikiLeaks. By means of the system of fast messages Manning entered a long conversation with Lamo to whom he trusted, and addressed for council. Lamo paid back for this trust, having quickly transferred the 23-year-old specialist of investigation to hands of military authorities. Now Manning over a year is held in custody.

Thus Lamo earned to himself a nickname of Judas and "the most hated hacker in the world" though he insisted on the understanding that publications of WikiLeaks of thousands of diplomatic documents can do harm or even to kill.

"Obviously, it was much worse for Manning, but it, certainly, was not a holiday for me", - Lamo told. - It followed commands of the conscience, and I followed the".

Tail call for FBI, in terms of internal attacks in the USA, is anarchical cooperation of "haktivist" who made several loud cyber attacks developed in recent months to make a loud statement. In a specific case the group calling itself Lulz Security carried out an impudent raid on the InfraGard organization – the program of assistance of FBI. Raid as spoke, was the answer to news of readiness of the Pentagon to announce foreign cyber attacks by acts of military operations.

Lulz Security in the qualities is similar to the Anonymous group which began attacks on Visa and MasterCard in protest at their solution to block transfer of donations to Wikileaks. Though Lulz Security appeared recently and FBI probably did not put on it a claw yet, Anonymous already is under pressure from the agency. In January raids in 40 addresses of the USA and five in Great Britain were made, and the grand jury in California heard testimonies against group before probable federal prosecution.

Barrett Brown (Barrett Brown) acting as the representative of Anonymous says that the group fully realizes the interest of FBI. "FBI is present always. They always monitor, they always in chats. You do not know - who the informant and who does not and in this sense you are vulnerable".

Update

As the Chief information officer of the Russian representative office of ESET Boris Greydinger reported TAdviser, for the last several months such large companies as Google, Sony and EMC were attacked by hackers. At the same time, the network of Sony company was successfully hacked already the fifth time lately.

According to him, the case of the attack on the popular LiveJournal (LJ) Internet resource created a scandal. According to the company, LiveJournal underwent DDoS attack by means of one hundred thousands of infected computers. With high probability it was the purposeful attack organized by professionals.

Also investigation into the case of group of the Russian hackers which was going to steal more than 36 million rubles from accounts of 457 clients in 96 Russian and foreign banks became one of the last large incidents.

Basic reason of fraud when using Internet banking, according to Boris Greydinger is weak information security policy both in the companies, and among the population which often do not use even elementary means of protecting of the computer.