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Nikita Kislitsin, formerly the head of network security for one of Russia’s top cybersecurity firms, was arrested last week in Kazakhstan in response to 10-year-old hacking charges from the U.S. Department of Justice. Experts say Kislitsin’s prosecution could soon put the Kazakhstan government in a sticky diplomatic position, as the Kremlin is already signaling that it intends to block his extradition to the United States.
Nikita Kislitsin, at a security conference in Russia.
Kislitsin is accused of hacking into the now-defunct social networking site Formspring in 2012, and conspiring with another Russian man convicted of stealing tens of millions of usernames and passwords from LinkedIn and Dropbox that same year.
In March 2020, the DOJ unsealed two criminal hacking indictments against Kislitsin, who was then head of security at Group-IB, a cybersecurity company that was founded in Russia in 2003 and operated there for more than a decade before relocating to Singapore.
Prosecutors in Northern California indicted Kislitsin in 2014 for his alleged role in stealing account data from Formspring. Kislitsin also was indicted in Nevada in 2013, but the Nevada indictment does not name his alleged victim(s) in that case.
However, documents unsealed in the California case indicate Kislitsin allegedly conspired with Yevgeniy Nikulin, a Russian man convicted in 2020 of stealing 117 million usernames and passwords from Dropbox, Formspring and LinkedIn in 2012. Nikulin is currently serving a seven-year sentence in the U.S. prison system.
As first reported by Cyberscoop in 2020, a trial brief in the California investigation identified Nikulin, Kislitsin and two alleged cybercriminals — Oleg Tolstikh and Oleksandr Vitalyevich Ieremenko — as being present during a 2012 meeting at a Moscow hotel, where participants allegedly discussed starting an internet café business.
A 2010 indictment out of New Jersey accuses Ieremenko and six others with siphoning nonpublic information from the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) and public relations firms, and making $30 million in illegal stock trades based on the proprietary information they stole.
[The U.S. Secret Service has an outstanding $1 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Ieremenko (Александр Витальевич Еременко), who allegedly went by the hacker handles “Zl0m” and “Lamarez.”]
Kislitsin was hired by Group-IB in January 2013, nearly six months after the Formspring hack. Group-IB has since moved its headquarters to Singapore, and in April 2023 the company announced it had fully exited the Russian market.
In a statement provided to KrebsOnSecurity, Group-IB said Mr. Kislitsin is no longer an employee, and that he now works for a Russian organization called FACCT, which stands for “Fight Against Cybercrime Technologies.”
“Dmitry Volkov, co-founder and CEO, sold his stake in Group-IB’s Russia-based business to the company’s local management,” the statement reads. “The stand-alone business in Russia has been operating under the new brand FACCT ever since and will continue to operate as a separate company with no connection to Group-IB.”
FACCT says on its website that it is a “Russian developer of technologies for combating cybercrime,” and that it works with clients to fight targeted attacks, data leaks, fraud, phishing and brand abuse. In a statement published online, FACCT said Kislitsin is responsible for developing its network security business, and that he remains under temporary detention in Kazakhstan “to study the basis for extradition arrest at the request of the United States.”
“According to the information we have, the claims against Kislitsin are not related to his work at FACCT, but are related to a case more than 10 years ago when Nikita worked as a journalist and independent researcher,” FACCT wrote.
From 2006 to 2012, Kislitsin was editor-in-chief of “Hacker,” a popular Russian-language monthly magazine that includes articles on information and network security, programming, and frequently features interviews with and articles penned by notable or wanted Russian hackers.
“We are convinced that there are no legal grounds for detention on the territory of Kazakhstan,” the FACCT statement continued. “The company has hired lawyers who have been providing Nikita with all the necessary assistance since last week, and we have also sent an appeal to the Consulate General of the Russian Federation in Kazakhstan to assist in protecting our employee.”
FACCT indicated that the Kremlin has already intervened in the case, and the Russian government claims Kislitsin is wanted on criminal charges in Russia and must instead be repatriated to his homeland.
“The FACCT emphasizes that the announcement of Nikita Kislitsin on the wanted list in the territory of the Russian Federation became known only today, June 28, 6 days after the arrest in Kazakhstan,” FACCT wrote. “The company is monitoring developments.”
The Kremlin followed a similar playbook in the case of Aleksei Burkov, a cybercriminal who long operated two of Russia’s most exclusive underground hacking forums. Burkov was arrested in 2015 by Israeli authorities, and the Russian government fought Burkov’s extradition to the U.S. for four years — even arresting and jailing an Israeli woman on phony drug charges to force a prisoner swap.
That effort ultimately failed: Burkov was sent to America, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to nine years in prison.
Alexei Burkov, seated second from right, attends a hearing in Jerusalem in 2015. Image: Andrei Shirokov / Tass via Getty Images.
Arkady Bukh is a U.S. attorney who has represented dozens of accused hackers from Russia and Eastern Europe who were extradited to the United States over the years. Bukh said Moscow is likely to turn the Kislitsin case into a diplomatic time bomb for Kazakhstan, which shares an enormous border and a great deal of cultural ties with Russia. A 2009 census found that Russians make up about 24 percent of the population of Kazakhstan.
“That would put Kazakhstan at a crossroads to choose between unity with Russia or going with the West,” Bukh said. “If that happens, Kazakhstan may have to make some very unpleasant decisions.”
Group-IB’s exodus from Russia comes as its former founder and CEO Ilya Sachkov remains languishing in a Russian prison, awaiting a farcical trial and an inevitable conviction on charges of treason. In September 2021, the Kremlin issued treason charges against Sachkov, although it has so far refused to disclose any details about the allegations.
Sachkov’s pending treason trial has been the subject of much speculation among denizens of Russian cybercrime forums, and the consensus seems to be that Sachkov and Group-IB were seen as a little too helpful to the DOJ in its various investigations involving top Russian hackers.
Indeed, since its inception in 2003, Group-IB’s researchers have helped to identify, disrupt and even catch a number of high-profile Russian hackers, most of whom got busted after years of criminal hacking because they made the unforgivable mistake of stealing from their own citizens.
When the indictments against Kislitsin were unsealed in 2020, Group-IB issued a lengthy statement attesting to his character and saying they would help him with his legal defense. As part of that statement, Group-IB noted that “representatives of the Group-IB company and, in particular, Kislitsin, in 2013, on their own initiative, met with employees of the US Department of Justice to inform them about the research work related to the underground, which was carried out by Kislitsin in 2012.”
The U.S. government this week put a $10 million bounty on a Russian man who for the past 18 years operated Try2Check, one of the cybercrime underground’s most trusted services for checking the validity of stolen credit card data. U.S. authorities say 43-year-old Denis Kulkov‘s card-checking service made him at least $18 million, which he used to buy a Ferrari, Land Rover, and other luxury items.
Denis Kulkov, a.k.a. “Nordex,” in his Ferrari. Image: USDOJ.
Launched in 2005, Try2Check soon was processing more than a million card-checking transactions per month — charging 20 cents per transaction. Cybercriminals turned to services like this after purchasing stolen credit card data from an underground shop, with an eye toward minimizing the number of cards that are inactive by the time they are put to criminal use.
Try2Check was so reliable that it eventually became the official card-checking service for some of the underground’s most bustling crime bazaars, including Vault Market, Unicc, and Joker’s Stash. Customers of these carding shops who chose to use the shop’s built-in (but a-la-carte) card checking service from Try2Check could expect automatic refunds on any cards that were found to be inactive or canceled at the time of purchase.
Many established stolen card shops will allow customers to request refunds on dead cards based on official reports from trusted third-party checking services. But in general, the bigger shops have steered customers toward using their own white-labeled version of the Try2Check service — primarily to help minimize disputes over canceled cards.
On Wednesday, May 3, Try2Check’s websites were replaced with a domain seizure notice from the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Department of Justice, as prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York unsealed an indictment and search warrant naming Denis Gennadievich Kulkov of Samara, Russia as the proprietor.
Try2Check’s login pages have been replaced with a seizure notice from U.S. law enforcement.
At the same time, the U.S. Department of State issued a $10 million reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Kulkov. In November 2021, the State Department began offering up to to $10 million for the name or location of any key leaders of REvil, a major Russian ransomware gang.
As noted in the Secret Service’s criminal complaint (PDF), the Try2Check service was first advertised on the closely-guarded Russian cybercrime forum Mazafaka, by someone using the handle “KreenJo.” That handle used the same ICQ instant messenger account number (555724) as a Mazafaka denizen named “Nordex.”
In February 2005, Nordex posted to Mazafaka that he was in the market for hacked bank accounts, and offered 50 percent of the take. He asked interested partners to contact him at the ICQ number 228427661 or at the email address polkas@bk.ru. As the government noted in its search warrant, Nordex exchanged messages with forum users at the time identifying himself as a then-24-year-old “Denis” from Samara, RU.
In 2017, U.S. law enforcement seized the cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e, and the Secret Service said those records show that a Denis Kulkov from Samara supplied the username “Nordexin,” email address nordexin@ya.ru, and an address in Samara.
Investigators had already found Instagram accounts where Kulkov posted pictures of his Ferrari and his family. Authorities were able to identify that Kulkov had an iCloud account tied to the address nordexin@icloud.com, and upon subpoenaing that found passport photos of Kulkov, and well as more photos of his family and pricey cars.
Like many other top cybercriminals based in Russia or in countries with favorable relations to the Kremlin, the proprietor of Try2Check was not particularly difficult to link to a real-life identity. In Kulkov’s case, it no doubt was critical to U.S. investigators that they had access to a wealth of personal information tied to a cryptocurrency exchange Kulkov had used.
However, the link between Kulkov and Try2Check can be made — ironically — based on records that have been plundered by hackers and published online over the years — including Russian email services, Russian government records, and hacked cybercrime forums.
Kulkov posing with his passport, in a photo authorities obtained by subpoenaing his iCloud account.
According to cybersecurity firm Constella Intelligence, the address polkas@bk.ru was used to register an account with the username “Nordex” at bankir[.]com, a now defunct news website that was almost standard reading for Russian speakers interested in news about various Russian financial markets.
Nordex appears to have been a finance nerd. In his early days on the forums, Nordex posted several long threads on his views about the Russian stock market and mutual fund investments.
That Bankir account was registered from the Internet address 193.27.237.66 in Samara, Russia, and included Nordex’s date of birth as April 8, 1980, as well as their ICQ number (228427661).
Cyber intelligence firm Intel 471 found that Internet address also was used to register the account “Nordex” on the Russian hacking forum Exploit back in 2006.
Constella tracked another Bankir[.]com account created from that same Internet address under the username “Polkas.” This account had the same date of birth as Nordex, but a different email address: nordia@yandex.ru. This and other “nordia@” emails shared a password: “anna59.”
Nordia@yandex.ru shares several passwords with nordia@list.ru, which Constella says was used to create an account at a religious website for an Anna Kulikova from Samara. At the Russian home furnishing store Westwing.ru, Ms. Kulikova listed her full name as Anna Vnrhoturkina Kulikova, and her address as 29 Kommunistrecheskya St., Apt. 110.
A search on that address in Constella brings up a record for an Anna Denis Vnrhoturkina Kulkov, and the phone number 879608229389.
Russian vehicle registration records have also been hacked and leaked online over the years. Those records show that Anna’s Apt 110 address is tied to a Denis Gennadyvich Kulkov, born April 8, 1980.
The vehicle Kolkov registered in 2015 at that address was a 2010 Ferrari Italia, with the license plate number K022YB190. The phone number associated with this record — 79608229389 — is exactly like Anna’s, only minus the (mis?)leading “8”. That number also is tied to a now-defunct Facebook account, and to the email addresses nordexin@ya.ru and nordexin@icloud.com.
Kulkov’s Ferrari has been photographed numerous times over the years by Russian car aficionados, including this one with the driver’s face redacted by the photographer:
The Ferrari owned by Denis Kulkov, spotted in Moscow in 2016. Image: Migalki.net.
As the title of this story suggests, the hard part for Western law enforcement isn’t identifying the Russian cybercriminals who are major players in the scene. Rather, it’s finding creative ways to capture high-value suspects if and when they do leave the protection that Russia generally extends to domestic cybercriminals within its borders who do not also harm Russian companies or consumers, or interfere with state interests.
But Russia’s war against Ukraine has caused major fault lines to appear in the cybercrime underground: Cybercriminal syndicates that previously straddled Russia and Ukraine with ease were forced to reevaluate many comrades who were suddenly working for The Other Side.
Many cybercriminals who operated with impunity from Russia and Ukraine prior to the war chose to flee those countries following the invasion, presenting international law enforcement agencies with rare opportunities to catch most-wanted cybercrooks. One of those was Mark Sokolovsky, a 26-year-old Ukrainian man who operated the popular “Raccoon” malware-as-a-service offering; Sokolovsky was apprehended in March 2022 after fleeing Ukraine’s mandatory military service orders.
Also nabbed on the lam last year was Vyacheslav “Tank” Penchukov, a senior Ukrainian member of a transnational cybercrime group that stole tens of millions of dollars over nearly a decade from countless hacked businesses. Penchukov was arrested after leaving Ukraine to meet up with his wife in Switzerland.
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