FBI Nabs Russian Hackers with Employment Scam

A Russian hacker wanted by the FBI for high-tech computer crimes was lured by the FBI to the U.S. using a job interview ruse. The FBI created a phony company known as "Invita," and solicited several Russians suspected of computer crimes against the U.S. to travel to Seattle, Washington for job interviews. The invitees were tasked with scanning an Invita computer network and finding and identifying its vulnerabilities as part of their skills qualification. Unknown to the suspects, the software they were using was capturing and logging every keystroke they made in their diagnosis and troubleshooting. This was later used to determine the suspects' passwords to their computers on a network located in Russia. Vasiliy Gorshkov of Moscow was sentenced by a U.S. Federal Court to three years in prison for computer crimes. Gorshkov was convicted of 20 counts of computer crime for fraud and conspiracy, stemming from his assistance to another Russian hacker, Alexev Ivanov, in stealing credit card numbers and information from U.S. companies. The U.S. Attorney's office confirmed Gorshkov's sentence but offered no other comment.

The State Security Service of Russia, the FSB, was furious over the FBI's jurisdiction 'entitlement' claim, and has lodged a complaint against the FBI, claiming that the U.S. agency lacked the authority to hack into a Russian computer network and download files that were physically located on a server in Russia. The FBI has countered that its agents' actions were not subject to Russian law.

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