Thanks very much for keeping us informed. It's encouraging to know Russians are angry about spam, too.

While the spammers are targeting potential customers in the US and western Europe, they are doing a lot of harm to Russians, too. Many ISPs and internet forums in the US have decided to reduce their spam by refusing *all* email and internet traffic from Asia and Eastern Europe, without investigating the reputation of the owner of each IP range. That's very sad.

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Skolkovo (Russian Sylicon Valley) is a much more serious problem arising from Russian based cyber crime to be honest.

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LOL Glav_gad, you won't argue that cyber crime is way more developed in Russia than Skolkovo :) Hopefully Skolkovo will work someday, and hopefully all those IT people who work on cyber crime can work on some startups which will be opened in Skolkovo, but it's a matter of years maybe even decades :)

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You dont get it.
Skolkovo is a project where innovators are supposed to be, programmers, it-guys, scientists etc. On the contrary to what most people think, the idea of Skolkovo is really to get smart guys worldwide and create Russian innovators area up and running.

However the reputation of Russia among simple people, guys LIKE YOU for example, I've read Your comments in Ponomarev blog, and they clearly show that I am right, no those guys in Governments (both Russian and non Russian dont give a fuck) but among simple is really really bad because a lot of simple cyber-crime like spam originates clearly from Russia. Because of such image it would be very difficult to attract those guys to Skolkovo no matter what is promised to them, internet serves as a mirror of real life and the result is quite obvious. Thats the problem which I was trying to highlight.

Do You follow me?

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Don't think that the fact that the best of breed hackers and spammers live in Russia will have a big impact on attracting IT people and companies to Skolkovo. Russia definitely has a very big scientific potential,quite low taxes, so I think Skolkovo can work,my main concern was that projects and companies which will work there will be evaluated by commission which will include people from government. When government starts to play a big role in economy it's in most cases stops working effectively :) So that's why I add this comment in Ponomarev's blog.

By the way hackers and spammers are living not only in Russia, I think the majority of malware is written in China now, but Russian malware is more effective because of higher intellectual potential of it's writers.

Plus Russia has loads of very successful IT companies like Kaspersky Lab,Yandex,Abby etc.

Cyber crime exists in any developed or developing country, but the main question how law enforcements deal with this problem are they catching bad guys or not. In Russia they do catch them sometimes but we need to do it more often.

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Unfortunately You do not understand entirely what is going on and how.
Let me try to explain.

I'll be damn to get these things on public, but nothing is more pathetic than when I read Russians doing posts in US/EU security blogs like "Hey guys! We're good! We're not bad!!! We dont know why we dont put these criminals in prison, but there are a lot of good Russians as well!"

Dont be idiots please, and try to understand a few simple things:

1. Common people think that Russia is full of cyber-crime because simply it is so. From Conficker to top-ten of Spamhaus. People beleive in what is true. And that is true.

2. Big guys dont work with people or mass-media as well. Big guys work with "situations", the Russian based cyber-crime is so big not because our guys are smarter, this is so pathetic to think so, You know there is an old saying "if You're so fucking smart, why are You so fucking poor?".

Trust me friend, most of our smart guys have immigrated to USA long time my friend, the Russian based cyber-crime is so big because USA and EU allows it to be big to scare its own people and Russia technology-wise is very far away from reversing it. And exactly this situation becomes a problem in the quest to get back smart guys to Russia. Do You really think that for USA its a problem to close down Glavmed/Spamit for example? It would take ONE MINUTE if they would want to. Beleive me. For Visa it takes 5 minutes to close down all processing including all hidden/non-hidden merchant accounts etc, when they want it, and 10 minutes more to write a letter to member banks with a warning not to work with certain merchant. For US/UK police it takes 30 minutes to collect evidence and transfer it to Russia together with a small delegation if they would want to.

While for Russia on another hand its a huge headache to run after guys who're not commiting any crime within Russia. Even legally-wise its a big problem, because the evidence which You need, unless You get someone to prison Hodorkovsky style is all abroad.

P.S. Kaspersky is run by FSB, just so You'd know this. Eugene Kaspersky actually was a Colonel (Col) of FSB when he was creating Kaspersky. Kaspersky Lab was entirely created by 16th center of FAPSI (former 8th Unit of KGB) my friend. This is the reason why they were able to get to success. Which is great though, absolutely great and has helped the country image a lot. However (!) Kaspersky according to market rumours has abused his position so to say and eliminated most of competition in the field of antivirus market within Russia, like DrWeb and similar products, originally there were like 20 companies on the market. Yandex was almost sold to USA investors, at least 50% of it, and Mr. President Medvedev was lucky enought to interfere and require the "gold share" in Yandex to be left to Russia in order to protect from loosing the company to USA completely, rumours say that in fact Yandex was purchased by Google in the early stage of creation, because technology wise Google is far more advanced than Yandex and the only reason why they did not dominate the Russian market is because Google itself never wanted it (question why?), this is the sole reason why our Government for last few years is obsessed with creating "national search engine" while guys like You think that its again someone wants to steal something. The official shareholder paperwork of Yandex for example differs a lot with what mass-media says about it, mass-media claims different shares to different people along with Yandex founder, when in real life Yandex Russia belongs 100% to Yandex N.V. Netherlands, which in its turn is held in a so called "Trust", trust is such a form of shareholders ownership under which it is literally impossible (unless there is a Dutch court order) to verify who actually owns what.
:-)

As I have said, there is a lot of things You probably dont know.

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P.S. I can imagine You will be a bit over reacting on things I am telling You, but I just beg You first to think, than to shoot so to say. :-)

Think Yourself, Medvedev comes to USA to open Skolkovo, next minute cold war style spy action starts. Just think for a minute, why? By the way if You're interested, yes they were spies.

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Well, we're getting way off topic, but ... all they're saying in the U.S. media is that they were involved in money laundering. Someone like that could be getting paid by a spy agency but have little access to state secrets on either side of the ocean.

Everyone plead guilty, so the ten years of gathered evidence wasn't presented in court. Do you have more details?

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Usually there is no evidence. And cant be. This is quite normal for things like that.
P.S. Speaking about ingenious us Russians, DST just announced their plans to go to stock exchange in US.
http://www.lenta.ru/news/2010/07/14/dst/

I've expected this for a very long time, thats the explanation as well for everyone why the hell DST bought ICQ and Facebook shares. Seems to be a step ahead right? Wrong.

DST has spent 500 million USD (half a fucking billion) on ICQ and Facebook shares, and takes an active role in Presidents Internet policy creation.

The whole idea is to get to stock exchange, get more money and re-invest it into new technologies, if Americans would be dumb enough to allow, and Americans are not dumb, so they wont, however guys, do You realise if we would not be SO MUCH fucked with reputation and had access to normal scientist type of guys for internet creations, do You actually realise how many of those fackebooks, icqs etc could have been created EASILY in 500 Million investment?

Sad shit.

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If a Russian company wants to get listed on a stock exchange in the U.S., they just have to meet whatever requirements are set by that particular stock exchange. One of the requirements of the American Stock Exchange (part of NASDAQ) is that the stock must be registered with the U.S. government's Security and Exchange Commission. That agency sets rules for accounting procedures and disclosure of information to stockholders, to try to reduce the possibility of investors being cheated. But it isn't a case of Americans deciding whether to allow a Russian company to be traded or not.

Lots of companies headquartered in other countries list their stocks on American stock exchanges. Americans invest in foreign countries, and people outside the U.S. invest in companies headquartered here.

Americans who invest in DST would EXPECT them to use the money they raise by selling stocks to invest in new technologies. And they would expect to share in the profits that eventually resulted from those investments, either by being paid dividends or by seeing the value of their stock rise over time.

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Dude, this is just wrong what you've said about Kaspersky. Yes he was a intelligence officer during Soviet Union times, he graduated from University of Cryptography which was one of the best universities at that time and after graduation he didn't have any choice rather than go to work for KGB(In Soviet Union times after graduation government was telling you where to work), he left his job in KGB because he was a techie and wanted to build something big and Soviet Union collapsed and people got opportunity to build their own businesses.

And he did that, people in USA and Europe are buying Kaspersky products only because of one reason,because they are good. Don't think that Kaspersky is run by FSB it's just stupid and a lot of people in US and England are thinking the same,but they are wrong, it's a typical successful business project which worked because of big luck and a very good products and technologies. I can believe that you can get rid of your competitors in Russia using FSB,which anyway haven't happened because there are a lot of companies out there,Dr Web, Eset and many others. But how connections with FSB helping you to conquer US and Europe's market.

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Dude,
He could not have been an intelligence officer, he was COUNTER Intelligence officer - colonel as I've said.
Univerity of Cryptography is FAPSI, FAPSI is (more or less) 8th Unit of KGB. I dont know how to explain it better and in more detail for those who know.

I never said his product is bad, and as I've said, on the contrary - it is great and his Western success is very much based on that.

What I tried to explain that rumours say that he has used his position with FSB (KGB) to wipe out competition in Russia. On top of that he had protection others did not, which is very VERY relevant in this matter, because in building Anti-Virus, in real life You have to build viruses themselves, which every security specialist knows, that more or less all AntiVirus companies from time to time heal from viruses they make themselves, but to do that You must have protection from law enforcement since viruses are illegal (Russian Criminal Codes 272, 273, 274).

Do You follow me?
P.S. As I've heard Dr Web is nearly bankcrupt. Dont know whether it is so or not.

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I know exactly what you mean :) It's like in Spam Assassin you can reject email which has certain encoding (Chinese,Russian etc) :)

I think average Russian Internet user is more annoyed by spam than anyone else on Earth, spam in Russian language is most sophisticated spam which I ever seen. The main problem that it mainly promotes local businesses and topics are changing very fast, you guys are not seeing this spam in US or Europe at all,because it targets Russian speakers based in Russia.

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Oh, we get it, too. :(

I'm not sure why a well-driller, or an apartment rental agent, or a seller of gift baskets of liquor from Russia wants to send email to the domain name of a small business or community group on another continent. But it leads us to mark anything containing code for Cyrillic characters as probable spam.

As I said, it's sad. My websites do have content of interest to people outside my area, and I get emails from people all over North America and occasionally from other countries. If the emails are in English, I can filter them. I would be perfectly willing to deal with translating a valid email sent in another language, but the problem is recognizing it among the many spam emails. With non-Roman characters, I just see gibberish in my plain-text email reader, and I have to paste the code into another program to decode it into readable characters.

Ordinary people in Russia and the US should be able to share interests. But I simply haven't time to decode the gibberish of thousands of spam emails to find one email that is worth translating.

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Feedback is still coming! I thought our TV stuff mostly goes unnoticed:) Quite a surprise!

Dmitry Shchugorev

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Do you post transcripts of your features on line? Most Americans know very little Russian and have few opportunities to hear/speak any foreign languages, but we can often muddle through translating a printed transcript using Google.

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Hi, I think, I can manage the translation to rule out some misunderstanding quite usual when you google from one language into another:)

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Thank you!

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