Russian Cybercrime Fuels US Gang War | Ukraine Under Threat | Surveillance Robot Apology

Plus: Wordle Is Tracking You, Here’s How To Stop It

Over the last few months, I've been going through court documents and talking to police about a new trend in Miami. While street gangs across America are committing all manner of frauds, in the South Floridian city, two rival crews are funding themselves almost entirely by identity theft. And they're buying Americans' data in huge quantities from Russian cybercrime forums.

It's the logical conclusion of the shift away from dangerous crimes like narcotics trafficking and into less dangerous, but hugely costly online crime. As one Miami police chief told me, "Fraud committed by gang members is a nationwide problem, but as with all things fraud, Miami is at the forefront."

Some of the gang members are gathering a lot of personal information, writing it all down in notebooks for future use, whether for Covid-related benefits fraud or other methods for stealing government money. When police raided the iCloud account and of one gangster, they found a file called “I’m rich bitch.” It was 7,620 pages long and contained thousands of people’s personal data. At the top of the list of organizations from whom data was pilfered was an unnamed Orlando medical facility.

You can read my story on Forbes here.

If you have any tips on government surveillance, privacy or cybercrime, drop me an email on tbrewster@forbes.com or message me on Signal at +447782376697.

The Big Story

The Stories You Have To Read Today

Both the U.S. and the U.K. released assessments that Russia was behind the attacks on Ukraine military and banking sites. Russia responded by saying, without any apparent irony, that it never carries out any offensive cyber campaigns, despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary.

A former police chief cracked jokes about using a surveillance robot he was promoting to police to spy on women's locker rooms. The CEO of the company behind the beer can-sized robot issued an apology after Forbes asked him about the incident.

A spyware dealer pleaded guilty to selling software from surveillance companies like Hacking Team to Mexican customers he knew would target political enemies based in America. The court documents detail the sale of WhatsApp snooping tools and the hacking of an America-based sales rep for $25,000.

Winner Of The Week

German investigative reporters did a fine job this week showing the power of open source intelligence gathering. They uncovered clues that led them from one of the world's most dangerous hacking crews called Turla, to Russia's FSB. It's remarkably well-presented and detailed, not to mention excellent reporting following breadcrumbs left on the web over the last 20 years.

Loser Of The Week

More like losers of the week. Around 30 users of the OpenSea platform had their NFTs stolen in what appear to be phishing attacks. The hacker stole over $3 million worth of the digital items, including at least one image from the Bored Ape Yacht Club. One wonders whether such hacks will make a mockery of NFTs in general, or just the security that's supposed to stop them being pilfered and turned into fraudulent proceeds.