The Wild Inner Workings of a Billion-Dollar Hacking Group
The Fin7 hacking group has leeched, by at least one estimate, well over a billion dollars from companies around the world. In the United States alone, Fin7 has stolen more than 15 million credit card numbers from over 3,600 business locations. On Wednesday, the Justice Department revealed that it had arrested three alleged members of the group—and even more important, detailed how it operates.
The indictments allege that three Ukrainian nationals—Dmytro Fedorov, Fedir Hladyr, and Andrii Kopakov—are members of Fin7, contributing to the group’s years-long reign as one of the most sophisticated, and aggressive, financially motivated hacking organizations in the world. Each has been charged with 26 felony counts, ranging from conspiracy to wire fraud to computer hacking to identity theft.
The three men allegedly had high-profile roles in Fin7: Hladyr as its systems administrator, and Fedorov and Kopakov as supervisors to groups of hackers. And although Fin7 has continued to operate since they entered custody—Hladyr and Fedorov in January, and Kolpakov in June—the arrests do mark law enforcement’s first win against the shadowy cybercrime empire.
