A top Secret Service official ended up spilling details about federal anti-hacker strategy at a relatively obscure federal hearing in Alabama. In testimony given to the House Committee on Financial Services, assistant director Alvin T. Smith revealed just how involved the Secret Service is in federal investigations into cybercrime … and told some extremely cool stories in the process.
Smith was a witness at a field hearing called, simply, “Hacked Off: Helping Law Enforcement Protect Private Financial Information.”
At the naughtily named hearing, Smith detailed how the Secret Service has infiltrated underground websites (including both hacker and cyberfraud sites) and bulletin boards. A 2008 investigation into criminals who stole credit and debit card numbers from Dave & Buster’s, OfficeMax, Sports Authority, and Barnes & Noble customers was largely accomplished thanks to accounts by undercover feds on illegal websites.
Undercover Secret Service agents then, with the assistance of Turkish and other international investigators, traced the sale of stolen American credit card numbers to Russia and Eastern Europe.
While The Guardian has previously revealed that the Secret Service has infiltrated hacker websites, this is one of the first times a federal official has spoken on the record about the extent of law enforcement penetration.
But pride of place in the presentation went to the elaborate methods that the Secret Service used to nab alleged credit card data thief “BadB,” aka Russian national Vladislav Horohorin. “BadB” was arrested in France in 2009 on charges related to the CarderPlanet website, which sold more than $9 million worth of stolen credit card numbers to criminals around the world.
