:: Deepquest ::

SoupNazi, and 2 others “unknown” Russian hackers (at least for the US court) are been sue for the biggest electonic robbery grabbing more than 130m Credit and debit cards.

Soupnazi, aka Soupy for the people who know him reminds me the old school scene, at the same time as Sk8 back in the early 2000’s. Soupnazi just borrowed his nickname to the famous TV show Friends (ep. 116th).Sk8 was less lucky since he was busted right after defcon 2001, he was charged for hacking into Ebay and other major websites.

The funnies part of Soupy is that knew he was an insider, a former Secret Services informant. At the time the Feds used to recruit alot  during Defcon we even had a game called “Spot the fed”. Was fun and easy.

According to the court document, the hackers allegedly stole more than 130 million credit and debit card numbers (.pdf) from Heartland and Hannaford combined. Prosecutors say they believe these breaches constitute the largest data-breach and identity-theft case ever prosecuted in the United States. They’re investigating other breaches and have not ruled out Gonzalez’s involvement in even more intrusions.

The concern is not to make Soupy a hero or a martyr from stealing such a number of credit cards but rather how come a small group of people, according to the court 3 people, can defeat and bypass multi billion US dollars companies and systems? Just for one reason credit card system are totally outdated. No matter if they use magnetic strips or chipset like most european countries.

This not the first case and won’t be the last one till credit cards companies update there systems. Don’t blame the hacker for the breaches but those companies should be charged for providing so little security protections. Other buddies from Shadow Crew back in 2002 showed those security problems, and no serious technologic lessons were lurn from this neither.

“we don’t choose our friends, we choose the IRC channel we join”

more details from Wired