The continuing saga of the Russian Business Network

The Russian Business Network (RBN) sounds innocuous enough, but it’s in fact a top-notch cyber-crime organisation. It has a reputation for online identity theft, hosting child pornography sites, pushing phishing and distributing phoney anti-malware software. The network provides a platform for organised crime to operate on an international level, in virtual safety. Pun intended.

Its genius lies in its complete deniability. It’s not a registered company and it uses anonymous addresses to register domain names. In true organised crime form, no one uses his or her real name, only aliases, and all business is generated via word of mouth. But the part that I like the best is that, despite a mountain of admittedly circumstantial evidence against them, they maintain that they are merely “misunderstood”.

Tim Jaret, from RBN’s abuse department, gave an email interview where he stated that he had no idea how various online security organisations had formed such negative opinions of the company. He contends that the “subjective opinion” is based on “guesswork”.

You have to admire that kind of ballsy denial, especially when all major anti-spam and security companies in the world have publicly declared them to be the “baddest of the bad”, “entirely illegal” (VeriSign Inc.), and “the worst of the internet spammers” (Spamhaus).

It does get better though, because while still trying to convince the world of their legitimacy, Jaret claims that they have worked hard to address all of the complaints lodged against them. He says that they worked with Spamhaus, a major anti-spam organisation, but that the relationship wasn’t constructive. The experience left such a bad taste in RBN’s mouth that they are considering taking legal action against Spamhaus.

The law seems to be very close to Jaret’s heart because when it was suggested that providing legitimate URLs for their legitimate customers would go a long way towards proving RBN’s legitimacy, he deferred, citing legal reasons. RBN is contractually barred from disclosing private information, unless compelled to do so by formal, official requests.

One doubts the success of formal channels in getting any creditable information, however, especially in light of the fact that RBN has suddenly and mysteriously vanished. On the 10th November 2007, Computerworld reported that RBN had apparently fled Russia to set up base in China. The move was short-lived, as their Internet connectivity ceased soon after they set up. No one is cheering their disappearance just yet though, because there is always the possibility that they’ll reappear in a different guise. Speculation is rife that they’ll split into smaller component organisations in different locations across the world, which will be more expensive to run, but will be more difficult to track.

For those of us who appreciate prime entertainment, however, the giant, defiant, crooked network that we’ve come to grudgingly admire for its sheer bloody-mindedness, is gone. I’m sure that they’ll understand if we fail to prostrate ourselves, tear our clothes and wear sackcloth and ashes in our grief. A wry smile will suffice.

Recommended sites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Business_Network

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2007/10/russian_network

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/110807-major-russian-crime-hub-suddenly.html?nlhtsec=1105securityalert5&&nladname=110907securityal

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9046299&pageNumber=1