Young geniuses: exploitation of Russian programmers in the USA

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Good news for a start. Recently, Russian students won the ACM ICPC World Programming Championship in Beijing for the seventh time in a row. The first place was taken by the team from Moscow State University, the second - by Phystech, ITMO took the ninth place. The Russians took the World Cup and four medals out of 13, more than any other country.

Since 2000, this is already the 13th victory of Russian students. This Olympiad is the largest in the world, there are 50 thousand participants, 140 teams participate in the final! This, by the way, is more than at the sports Olympics, which usually involve three to four thousand athletes.

Perhaps you have not heard about this - they write about our next programming victory rather restrainedly, this is not Telegram or Armenia. And even more so not the adventures of celebrities.

April 18, 2018 3:27 am

Yes, our programmers are very cool. Everyone knows that. But I am quite sure that most of today's winners will leave our country on the horizon of three to five years. Eyewitnesses and participants say that the winners and prize-winners of programming olympiads are surrounded by a dense crowd of recruiters from global IT companies (mostly American, of course) - IBM, Intel, Google and others. It is clear why.

CC BY 3.0 / acmICPC / Michael Roytek / Moscow State University

In this regard, I would like to ask: where is the meeting with the country's leadership and the distribution of BMW cars?

Genius programmers are directly related to the security of the country, import substitution, and the digital economy, finally. Why do our young programming geniuses receive mostly inviting offers from Silicon Valley, and not the same praises and offers as athletes?

Of course, the leakage of our programmer personnel, in principle, occurs from everywhere. In fact, for the past 30 years, we have been the forge of programmers and mathematicians for the United States. Russian programmers are everywhere: at Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook - and often in high positions.

March 14, 2018 1:02 pm

We have one of the best math education in the world, mostly free. And there, "they have", there is a machine that generously prints world currency, there is a venture casino in Silicon Valley with distribution of treats to players, there is a better climate, there is abundant food, drugs are allowed there, there is generally movement. Salaries there are at least two to three times higher. They are happy to take gratuitous mathematicians from us.

Why not take them? These people are a rare resource, and you can print (draw on computers) as many pieces of paper as you need.

And here in the leading universities of the country you can find a poster "Work in the USA" and an office of recruiters right at the Faculty of Mathematics.

And the dean, if you ask him about it, hesitates with a satisfied smile and says: yes, we have a lot of graduates now in the Valley, at MIT, Caltech, Google - this shows our level!

No dear readers, this shows something completely different about this dean.

February 9, 2018 4:47 pm

Where is the state's awareness of the strategic importance of this rare resource? Where is a special mortgage for programmers, where are state awards and prizes for Olympiads, where are the benefits, media promotion, where is the support program, where …

Okay, well, it was a saying. And here's a fairy tale.

Among other methods of headhunting in the United States, that is, ways to cheaply take away mathematical and programming geniuses and specialists from us, there is one particularly effective one.

Russian programmers extradited to the United States over the past few years (incomplete list):

1. Mark Vartanyan was extradited from Norway to the United States in December 2016. In March 2017, he pleaded guilty, and on July 19 was sentenced to five years in prison.

2. Stanislav Lisov was extradited from Spain to the United States. He was detained in Spain on January 13, 2017 and could face up to 35 years in prison.

© Photo: provided by the Spanish Civil Guard

3. Evgeny Nikulin was detained in the fall of 2016 in Prague. Extradited to the United States in March this year.

4. Petr Levashov was detained in April 2017 in Barcelona at the request of the United States.

5. Vladimir Drinkman and Dmitry Smilyanets: in February 2018, the New Jersey State Court sentenced Drinkman to 12 years in prison, Dmitry Smilyanets was released in the courtroom.

6. Nikita Kuzmin was arrested in the United States in 2010. In May 2016, the court ordered him to pay $ 6, 9 million in compensation to the victims and sentenced him to 37 months in prison (already served time in custody), released.

7. Vladimir Zdorodenin was extradited to the United States on January 16, 2012. In February 2012, he partially pleaded guilty.

8. Alexander Kostyukov was arrested in Miami in March 2012. In December 2015, he was sentenced to nine years in prison and a $ 50 million fine.

9. Alexander Panin in June 2013 in the Dominican Republic was arrested and then extradited to the United States. He pleaded guilty in exchange for dropping some of the charges. In September 2015 he was sentenced to 9.5 years in prison.

10. Belorussov Dmitry was arrested at the Barcelona airport on August 17, 2013, in May 2014 he was extradited to the United States. In September 2015, he was sentenced to 4, 5 years in prison and payment of 322 thousand dollars in damages.

11. Maxim Chukharev in April 2014 was extradited to the United States from Costa Rica. In September 2014, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison.

12. Roman Polyakov, detained in Spain on July 3, 2014, in 2015 was extradited to the United States. In June 2016, he pleaded guilty, sentenced to four years in prison and a $ 90,000 fine.

13. Roman Seleznev was detained on July 5, 2014 at the airport of the Maldives in the city of Male by American special services. In April 2017, he pleaded partially guilty, was sentenced to 27 years in prison and a $ 170 million fine. In July 2017, new charges of cyber fraud were brought against Seleznev, and he was sentenced to another 14 years in prison, for a total of 41 years.

14. Maxim Senakh was arrested in Finland in August 2015, in January 2016 he was extradited to the United States. In March 2017, he pleaded guilty to cybercrimes. In August 2017, he was sentenced to 46 months in prison.

15. Yuri Martyshev was detained on April 26, 2017 in the Republic of Latvia at the request of the United States.

16. Dmitry Ukrainsky was detained in July 2016 in Thailand at the request of the US FBI.

17. Sergei Medvedev, detained in Bangkok in February 2018 on a tip from the FBI.

18. Alexander Vinnik was detained on July 25, 2017 in Greece at the request of the US special services.

And so on. I removed from this certificate the details of the charges and the vicissitudes of the lawsuits, it would have been a dozen more pages. But below I will tell you the general scheme of "special recruiting".

First, I will say that I know at least two cases when the Russian state "fit in" for the arrested "hacker".

February 7, 2018 8:54 pm

This is, firstly, the case of Dmitry Zubakha, who was arrested in July 2013 on vacation in Cyprus, and I was involved in bringing him to Russia. It was an employee of the company "Ashmanov & Partners", we were engaged in programming an advertising system. He was accused of the attack on Amazon, which took place four years before joining us, and threatened him with 25 years in prison. The Russian prosecutor's office demanded his extradition to Russia, Dmitry agreed, and our lawyers did not allow him to be taken to the United States. And in April 2014 Dmitry arrived in Russia. He is grateful for the help, he is doing well, a child was born here, he works as a technical director at an Internet company.

And the second case is with Fyodor Manokhin, who was arrested in Sri Lanka at the beginning of 2017 on charges of hacker attacks and interference in the presidential elections by the US authorities (!), According to which Manokhin could receive up to 60 years in prison in the USA. The American side did not provide any evidence. As a result, the General Prosecutor's Office of Russia joined the fight for Manokhin, which sent a request to Sri Lanka to extradite him to his homeland. Somehow Manokhin ended up at home, although I personally know little about this case.

This is lucky. And dozens of Russian programmers are arrested every year and taken to the United States. The press hardly writes about this.

What should be noted here.

19 January 2018, 00:46

First, obviously, the United States considers the whole world to be its jurisdiction. Often they don't even bother with Interpol orders, but simply demand their extradition. And quite a large part of the world obediently obeys: Americans are afraid.

Second, these people seem to be criminals. I have heard such opinions: why do we need them, they are caught correctly. What are we to do with them here?

Unfortunately, there is no way to know for sure. And that's why. If you read more carefully the list of those extradited, you will notice one peculiarity: either the defendant goes to a deal with the investigation and gets several years in prison, or even goes free, because he has already served the exact term appointed by the court, or receives inconceivable terms - 25-40 years in prison. More than we get for a few murders.

The scheme is as follows:

1. The extradition court in the country where the "hacker" was arrested does not consider the case on the merits of the charges. He understands only whether the incriminated act is a crime under the laws of a given country. If yes, it automatically returns the arrested "hacker" to the United States. Assuming that already there he will be judged on the merits - honestly and impartially, of course. We know that everything is fair in the USA.

2. In the USA, the extradited person is told: look, guy, according to the amount of charges you are "bursting" with 30-40 years in prison. You will leave an old man if the previously tanned and bored inmates do not torture you to death with progressive love. And if you go to a deal, plead guilty, get from two to five years, or even just a term already served in a good prison - then you go out, get a green card and work for the best intelligence in the world, the NSA, by profession.

3. What does a "hacker" who has long been cut off from his family, homeland, friends, who usually cannot afford a good lawyer, is exhausted by persuasion and horror stories of "hens" planted in his cell and begins to believe in these 30 years in prison ahead? Naturally, he agrees to the deal. He has no other alternatives in the face of the most powerful repressive machine in the world - we, Russia, do not offer him anything.

4. And then the court should not consider any evidence. The deal is the same. Full admission of guilt. Very convenient - because evidence is usually missing or unusable.

9 January 2018, 08:00

And it is already impossible to find out whether the "hacker" was actually guilty.

US intelligence received another specialist in gray operations, NSA and FBI operatives - stars for shoulder straps, the "hacker" jumped out of the worst nightmare of his life and exhales, gets used to the new reality.

Now, exactly this scheme is developing with Alexander Vinnik, who was arrested in Thessaloniki in 2017. He was first accused of creating a cryptocurrency exchange BTC-E, not licensed in the United States. A couple of US citizens (FBI agents) specially set up accounts on the exchange to show that this exchange also works with US citizens, which means it is under American jurisdiction.

© AP Photo / Giannis Papanikos

However, it is not a crime under Greek law to create exchanges that are not licensed in the United States. And the Americans, realizing their mistake, after a couple of weeks simply changed the charge: now they took the entire turnover of the exchange during its entire existence - four billion dollars - they called it criminal income, and accused Vinnik, as the owner of the exchange, of laundering this entire amount.

Everything in this business is a props. In addition to the desire of the US intelligence services to take Vinnik to their place and get passwords. Vinnik is not the owner of the exchange, he is a technical specialist. The exchange does not launder money, it allows you to trade cryptocurrencies. Turnover is not income. Trading volume is not criminal money. Vinnik does not have billions: he is not rich, he pays a mortgage. Well, and so on.

Why is the United States so grasping at Vinnik? There is another important reason here, besides the fact that they specifically need him as a key specialist - along with passwords, of course.

December 27, 2017 8:54 am

The cryptocurrency world was created by the Americans as a kind of new global project in the field of world finance. In fact - as a substitute for the dollar. Surprisingly, the Russians (and the Chinese) have taken a prominent place in it, unexpectedly for the United States.

The Russians have created a huge number of independent currencies, services and exchanges. The process went wrong and began to spiral out of control.

The Americans want to bring it back under their control.

At the same time, now it seems that the "hacker", according to the deal, will also be required to participate in media campaigns against Russia, to be recognized in attacks on the US elections and the like. Roughly like from the "whistle-blower of Russian doping" Rodchenkov.

The Americans (as in the case of Zubakha) go to Vinnik's cell and directly tell him exactly what I wrote above: do not bother, agree to extradition to the United States. And your tools, passwords and source codes - try not to forget. You will sit for a year, write out a green card, you will work. Otherwise, we'll pull it out anyway and get your thirty!

And Vinnik has a seriously ill wife, two small children, parents, Motherland. He does not want to go to the US and does not want to work for the NSA. He disagrees.

October 20, 2017 2:17 pm

Lawyers file appeals, requests for political asylum, while they are holding him. But they won't be able to for a long time - without the help of the state.

Where is our state? Why doesn't it help?

You may ask, why do we need Vinnik, even if he is not a criminal? Here's why.

Firstly, he (and people like him, whom the United States grabs and drags around the world with impunity and without hindrance) is a really cool specialist, a carrier of completely unique theoretical and practical knowledge about the most advanced areas of information technology, with more than 20 years of experience in fintech. years. We have few such people, they are being washed away by HYIP into Silicon Valley.

For us, this knowledge of theirs is vital for the very technological breakthroughs that the country's leadership is talking about.

Secondly, he is a citizen of Russia. That should be enough by now. If we tried to detain and try a US citizen on similar charges, an absolutely monstrous media storm would rise. And now everything is quiet. According to the Constitution, we do not extradite our citizens from our territory, but from someone else's, from vacation, we do. Why is that?

April 25, 2018 8:00 am

We must also protect our citizens. If they are really to blame, this should be determined by our court, the Russian one, not the American one.

These are our citizens.

Now the departure of any technician on vacation or a business trip abroad is a huge risk, especially in conditions when, in fact, they are being hunted. And we do not have a mechanism to automatically activate state protection and rescue procedures.

We need the arrest of any Russian citizen abroad to become a national event. That the status of a citizen of Russia was similar to the status of a Roman citizen during the Roman Empire. So that they immediately report to the very top, so that interdepartmental working groups are immediately created, diplomats begin to work, and so on.

And even more so when trying to seize strategic intellectual resources by a "potential adversary."