“If you want to hack a phone, order a cyber attack on a competitor's website or buy a Trojan program to steal banking information, look no further than the former Soviet Union,” trumpeted Reuters.
Never mind China, the breadth and sophistication of services sold on Russian-language websites such as Forum.zloy.bz or Forum.evil makes the country crime central. Vitaly Kamluk, a cyber security researcher in Moscow was quoted as saying that most malware attacks come from China, Latin America and then Eastern Europe, but in terms of quality then Russia is probably the leader.
According to Reuters two of the five most wanted men in the United States for cybercrime are Russian and the other one is Latvia which apparently used to be part of the Soviet Union so they are all in on it. So what brought about this sudden revelation that the Russians are the world’s best hackers? That would be Moscow's decision to harbour Edward Snowden, wanted in the United States for leaking details of US spying.