Cyber Crime and Security

FBI Sting

Cyber Crime and Security

Today cyberspace plays an important role in numerous aspects of society. It’s so common now days that people don't realize that it play a major role in basic facilities like water, energy, food, gas, electricity and national security. Criminals use the Internet to commit fraud and theft and to prey upon our children. Spies and terrorists exploit our networks to steal our secrets, attack our critical infrastructure, and threaten our national security because the Internet offers near-total anonymity; it is hard to distinguish the identity, motives, and the location of an intruder. As a result, protecting cyberspace has become a national priority for governments around the world. Unfortunately, since cyber criminals have become resilient to these passive cyber defense strategies. As the cyber criminals adapted over time it required a shift in tactics to active cyber defense. The tactics being discussed are how the FBI lured two Russian cyber criminals to America and through a series of events arrested them for committing cyber-crimes against several US companies.

From Russia to America

In November 2000 FBI agent Michael Schuler and other agents came up with a plan to catch Alexey Ivanov who identified himself in an e-mail threatening to destroy data at a victimized company (Brunker, 2002). From there the agents found Ivanov's resume online and posing as representatives of a fictional network security company called Invita, contacted him to offer him a job. The representatives offered to pay for his airfare and encourage him to bring one of his colleges Vasiliy Goshkov who was also a programmer. At this point the two Russians Alexey Ivanov's age 20 and Vasiliy Gorshkov age 25 set flight from Chelyabinsk, Russia to America with hopes of working for their dream job at Invita Security.

Upon arriving to Seattle they were greeted by the Invita host who explained that they were looking for a couple of skilled hackers who...