The HangUp Team has been operating in Russia with impunity for years.
Little was heard from the HangUp Team for the next two years. But in 2003 the gang released the viruses Berbew and Webber. Then last year the group infected online stores with a fiendish piece of software called the Scob worm. Scob waited for Web surfers to connect, then planted software in their hard disks that spied on their typing and relayed thousands of passwords and credit-card numbers to a server in Russia, police say. "These guys have set a new standard for sophistication among criminal hackers," says A. James Melnick, 51, director of threat intelligence at iDEFENSE, a Reston (Va.) cybersecurity firm.
The HangUp crew isn't even covering its tracks. Each of the three bugs contained a telltale signature: "Coded by HangUp Team." With HangUp operating so publicly, it's not clear why its members have been so hard to catch. Russian authorities say they have been hampered by the red tape of securing warrants, coordinating with U.S. and British police, and translating documents.
Just kill them.