Prisoner Swap: Huge Russian Hackers Freed — Seleznev and Klyushin
Anger as Putin gets back two notorious cybercriminals.
Vladislav Klyushin and Roman Seleznev were among the jailed Russians returned to Putin’s bosom yesterday. In exchange for journalist Evan Gershkovich, ex-marine Paul Whelan, two other U.S. residents, five Germans and seven Russian dissidents, the West gave up a total of eight Russian criminals, including this brace of scrotes.
Previously, the U.S. Justice Dept. had painted their arrests as big deals. In today’s SB Blogwatch, we ponder the moral hazards.
Your humble blogwatcher curated these bloggy bits for your entertainment. Not to mention: Working at CrowdStrike.
Pragmatic Politics
What’s the craic? Daryna Antoniuk reports: US releases Russian hackers
“Roman Seleznev and Vladislav Klyushin”
The U.S., Germany and Slovenia swapped prisoners with Russia and Belarus at an airport in Ankara, Turkey. … The list of Russian nationals released from the West includes hackers Roman Seleznev and Vladislav Klyushin.
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Seleznev, also known by the aliases Track2, Bulba and Ncux 3, … hacked into retail point-of-sale systems and installed malicious software that allowed him to steal millions of credit card numbers from more than 500 U.S. businesses. [He] was sentenced to 27 years in prison in 2017 for stealing and selling millions of credit card numbers and causing more than $169 million in damage.
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The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) called Klyushin “a sophisticated hacker.” [He] was sentenced in 2023 to nine years in prison in the U.S. for his role in a $93 million stock market cheating scheme that relied on secret corporate information stolen through the hacking of U.S. computer networks.
What else do we know about them? All aboard the Brian Krebs cycle: U.S. Trades Cybercriminals to Russia in Prisoner Swap
“Arrested while vacationing abroad”
Seleznev earned this then-record sentence by operating some of the underground’s most bustling marketplaces for stolen card data. [He] is the son of Valery Seleznev, a prominent member of the Russian parliament who is considered an ally of Vladimir Putin. U.S. prosecutors showed that for years Seleznev stayed a step ahead of the law by tapping into contacts at the Russian FSB. … But in 2014 Seleznev was captured … in The Maldives.
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Klyushin, a 42-year-old Muscovite sentenced … to nine years in prison for what U.S. prosecutors called a “$93 million hack-to-trade conspiracy,” … is the owner of M-13, a Russian technology company that contracts with the Russian government. [He] likewise was arrested while vacationing abroad: [He] was captured in Switzerland after arriving on a private jet.
That’s not ideal. AJ Vicens and Greg Otto say the two Russians were behind some of the most notorious cybercrimes of the past decade:
“Complex negotiations”
Maksim Nemtsev, Klyushin’s attorney, confirmed to [us] that the swap, including Klyushin, was complete. “I expect he will be home with his wife and children shortly,” Nemtsev said.
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The two were released as part of a large-scale prisoner exchange that experts are saying is the biggest swap since the end of the Cold War. President Joe Biden called the deal “a feat of diplomacy,” and said it came about as a result of “complex negotiations” that included the U.S., Russia, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Turkey.
Was it worth it? You can almost hear the sigh coming from fuzzyfuzzyfungus:
I realize that this isn’t news: But the contrast between the slate of journalists, activists and, opposition politicians being released on one side; and the thieves, spies, and murderers being released on the other is a fairly profoundly damning assessment of national priorities.
A case of, “One of these things is not like the other.” quantified is keeping score:
We trade away knights to get pawns. Such is the asymmetry in morals.
Pawns? Kernel Kurtz calls them “stupid:”
How about just don’t go there? Seriously. People from the west travel to places like Iran, Russia, even China, and end up kidnapped, er, detained.
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Well, duh. These places are ****holes with no legitimate justice systems or human rights. You really should know you are risking your freedom and your life by travelling to such places.
Should we ban travel to Russia? YetAnotherBoris learned something today:
Can we now just ban Americans from traveling to Russia? … We shouldn’t continue putting ready-to-nab hostages in Putin’s hands.
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Upon actually checking U.S. policy, it turns out we don’t ban travel anywhere — not even to North Korea, which I could’ve sworn is illegal, but apparently not. We just strongly recommend not to do it. [So] an explicit policy amendment of, “If you still go and get detained, you’re on your own,” … seems to be called for.
Tough love? paxys agrees:
I’m happy they are coming back. But at this point the government really needs to take the hard stance that if you go to Russia for any reason, you are on your own.
Isn’t agreeing to a swap setting up trouble for the future? quantaman thinks it’s much more complicated than that:
You’re thinking about it like a standard hostage taking where Russia’s only incentive to take them was for ransom and the US’s only recourse was the exchange. … Even without the incentive of prisoner exchanges you’ll still get lots of foreigners arrested on false charges or given extreme punishments.
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Hostile states have multiple motivations to arrest foreigners on trumped up charges. They could be playing to their domestic audience, they could have been a pawn in some internal power struggle, it might be reprisals for sanctions, or a dozen other reasons.
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Similarly, Western nations have recourse other than exchanges: They can threaten increased sanctions, go after business deals that the hostile nation has in other countries, or get the leaders uninvited from various summits.
Meanwhile, TheAxMan cuts to the chase: [You’re fired—Ed.]
Klyushin and Seleznev are no angels but they don’t sound like criminal masterminds or insanely gifted hackers like prosecutors seem to be claiming. More like leaf nodes in organized crime units.
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[Sam Bankman-Fried] single-handedly dwarfs them. Monthly wage theft in the US dwarfs them. White collar crime in the US, in general, dwarfs them.
And Finally:
Hat tip: CrowdStrike effected a Streisand
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