Underground carders market. Translation of the book "KingPIN". Chapter 19. "Carders Market"

In the previous chapter 18, we met with the cunning reptile Keith Mularski, an enterprising FBI who left with the nose of the KGB and the FSB, and now decided to repurpose as a cyberjedi, a keeper of peace and cache.

Today's chapter tells how, after a series of high-profile arrests and the closing of key hacker forums ( Operation Firewall ), Max Butler rolled out his forum, with cool design and with a Russian admin, and the secret services missed a big fish.

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Kevin Poulsen, editor of the magazine WIRED, and in his childhood blackhat, the hacker Dark Dante, wrote a book about " one of his acquaintances ."

The book shows the path from a teenager-geek (but at the same time pitching), to a seasoned cyber-pahan, as well as some methods of the work of the special services to catch hackers and carders.
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The book translation quest started in the summer in the IT camp for high school students - “ Kingpin: schoolchildren translate a book about hackers ”, then Habrayusers and even a little editorial staff joined the translation.

Chapter 19. Carders Market

(thanks for the translation thanks to habster ungswar )

No matter how hard Max tried, he couldn’t get acclimatized on any of the new forums that had grown on the ruins of Shadowcrew. All of them were corrupt, belonged to sellers who were hostile to competitors from the outside. In a sense, it was a blessing. He could never fully trust any of these sites — he knew all too well that this scene was full of police and informers.

Finally, he came to the conclusion: if he began to trade, the only platform could be only the site that he owns. Still imagining Robin Hood, he chose the perfect name for his forum: Sherwood Forest.

Chris agreed with this plan — he liked the idea of ​​selling fake credit cards and driver's licenses in a safe environment — but he was infuriated by the name. From the point of view of branding, “Sherwood Forest” was not particularly suitable for the criminal market. The partners returned to the options again, and in June 2005, Max, using a fictitious name and a fictitious address in Anaichem, registered Cardersmarket.com.

It was a critical period for Max: the end of federal supervision over him was as if he had been parole, and if he had lasted until midnight on October 10, 2005, he would have been a free person not obliged to play the role of a part-time computer consultant before his curator for early release. It should have been easy enough - to endure a few more months. In addition to Chris himself, both Chris's friends knew about Max's double life: Jeff Norminton and Werner Janer, a real estate fraudster who wrote Charity $ 5,000 check that helped Max get back to hacking.

Later, in September 2005, Werner was arrested.

From the very beginning of their relationship with Max, Chris threw a number of cards to Jener occasionally — maybe around 80 in more than 3 years — in exchange for 10 percent of General’s purchases. This month, Jenner asked for two dozen cards — financial problems forced him to sell his family home in Los Angeles and he moved to Westport, Connecticut, to start all over again. Shortly thereafter, an accomplice in criminal cases robbed him - Gener lost almost all the income from selling the house, and he needed to increase income to support himself and his wife with three children.

When Chris's package arrived, Gener, a passionate collector of watches, went straight to Richards, a men's clothing and accessories store in Greenwich, where top chronometers were sold. Genera had high-quality plastic and an identity card in the name of Stephen Leahy. What he didn’t have was carding experience. He chose not one, not two, but four Anonimo watches costing from 1 to 3 thousand dollars each. At the same time he asked the store owner to punch all the watches separately and paid for them with four different Visa cards, which he openly pulled out of a whole pack of cards. Two very large transactions were rejected and as a result, Gener received only two hours for a total of $ 5,777, paid for by Bank of America cards.

The patrol car caught up with him a couple of miles. While the police were checking that the driver’s driver’s license was General and asked if he had just bought a watch, the second car arrived at the store owner, who confirmed that they had stopped the guy himself.

The police arrested General and searched his car, finding a watch, 28 credit cards, 6 driver's licenses for various names. When the detectives received a search warrant to search his home, they found a few more hours and a twenty-two second Walter P22 pistol.
The gun marked the bad news. Instead of being accused of theft and violating the rules of conditional release, Genera was now awaiting a charge of illegal possession of firearms. Without wasting time, he suggested bringing the feds to the source of fake maps. In accordance with the standard conditions for informers, the government agreed to accept this information in exchange for limited immunity: none of what Gener said will not be used against him. If the information turns out to be useful - it will lead to arrests - they will consider the possibility of recommending a reduction of the term on charges of possessing weapons.

During the two meetings, a total of 8 hours, Gener laid out everything he knew to the local Secret Service agents and the federal prosecutor. He told them about Chris Aragon, his cashier chain, and Hacker Max, a two-meter-high computer genius who hacked banks from hotel rooms in San Francisco.

He did not know the name of Max, but he remembered that he once wrote a check for $ 5,000 to a hacker girlfriend. Her name was Charity Majors.

The Secret Service recorded the interview and entered the information into the agency’s computer, but the agency did not verify this data, so the prosecutors refused to Gene in the special conditions of his case. He was sentenced to 27 months in prison.

Max Vision dodged a bullet. Gener’s testimony drowned in a gigantic government computer — they might as well have been hidden in a cave from the final scene of the film “In Search of the Lost Ark” (Indiana Jones). Until no one had a reason to dig them out, Max was safe.

Meanwhile, Max began the process of becoming a Carders Market. He had a lot of experience in launching legal sites, but the criminal site required special preparation. For example, that he could not place the Carders Market server directly on the floor of his house - this would make it an easy target.

He hacked a data center in Florida working through provider Affinity Internet and installed a VMware virtual machine on one of their servers, hiding a whole computer in their system. His hidden server assigned one of the unused Affinity addresses. The site will become a ghost ship that is not owned and serviced by anyone.

Max played with various online forums and finally settled on a vBulletin flexible engine. He spent months customizing the look and design of the templates for the look of the site, styling it in shades of gray and a muted gold color. Work looked satisfactory. For the first time in several years, he was creating something, not stealing. It was just like the development of Whitehats.com, except for those moments that were on the other side.

Finally, on the first anniversary of the operation “Firewall”, he added a new name to his ever-changing list of pseudonyms: Iceman. One of the reasons for choosing such a nickname was his routine: there were a lot of Icemans in the underground, even Shadowcrew was alone. If law enforcement agencies tried to track him down, they would see several mirages on their radar.

Under modest fanfare, Iceman launched Cardersmarket.com in late 2005. Chris joined as the first co-administrator, picking up his nickname EasyLivin.

After careful observations of Shadowcrew and small followers, Max and Chris realized that the key to gaining recognition would be to appoint famous people to the management positions who would help support the forum and attract even more heavy artillery from their friends. Soon the partners managed to attract two famous people from the Shadowcrew diaspora.

Bradley Anderson, a 41-year-old Cincinnati graduate, was their first acquisition. Anderson was a legend under the nickname "ncXVI" - an expert on fake IDs, the author of the self-published book Shedding Skin, a bible on personality changes.

The second recruit was Brett Shannon-Johnson, 35, from Charleston, South Carolina, the personal data hijacker known online as Gollumfun — the founder of Counterfeit Library and Shadowcrew who retired during the second site before the secret service destroyed him .

After he disappeared from the scene for more than a year, Johnson tried to get back in business. Chris John's accomplice John Giannone noticed him online in the spring and started a dialogue on ICQ, bringing him up to date on the latest arrests and gossip.

Giannone provoked Johnson by selling him 29 dumps of Max for only 600 bucks, then presented him to Max, who sold him another 500 cards. “I see that we will do good business in the future,” said Max Johnson.

Johnson accepted the offer of Max and Chris to become the admin on the Carders Market, providing the site with the experience and contacts of a single Shadowcrew administrator who survived “Firewall”.

Giannone joined the Carders Market under the nickname "Zebra", and Max created a second account with the pseudonym "Digits". Alternative personality was a key feature in Max's new business strategy. Shadowcrew fell because the prosecutors proved that the founders themselves were buying, selling and using stolen data, and managing the information website itself was not illegal, Max concluded. So, Iceman should be the face of Carders Market, but will never buy or sell stolen data. Digits - his alter ego - will take care of this, selling the dumps that Max received from the Vancouver pizzeria to anyone who can get them.

To complete his vision of the site, Max needed one more admin with certain skills: fluent in Russian. He wanted to restore the gulf that Operation Firewall had made between Eastern Europe and their Western counterparts. Two Russian participants in Shadowcrew have fallen into the Cumbajohnny VPN trap, and this whole situation has caused the Russians to treat English-speaking forums with great suspicion.

Max decided that the Carders Market would stand out at the expense of the East European section moderated by the indigenous Russians. He could only find a candidate.

Chris offered to help and Max agreed. If there was any thing Chris had proved to his partner, it was that he knew how to attract new talents.

To be continued