Former hacker, converted by Russia’s FSB, arrested for treason

Major Dmitry Dokuchaev – the third person arrested for treason in ongoing case involving employees of the FSB’s cybersecurity division – was a hacker before being recruited by the FSB, reported newspaper RBK, citing unnamed sources. The case also involves the head of the computer incidents investigation team at Kaspersky Lab Ruslan Stoyanov and head of one of the departments of the FSB’s cybersecurity division Sergey Mikhaylov.

The sources told RBK that the FSB had recruited Dokuchaev under threat of criminal proceedings for theft involving debit cards. In the hacker community, Dokuchaev was known by the alias Forb, which he used in an interview with the newspaper Vedomosti in 2004. Then, Forb said that stealing money from debit cards was the main source of his income. The hacker also performed hacking on request.

Before 2005, Forb also wrote the column Vzlom (Hacking) in the magazine Hacker. Editor-in-chief Ilya Rusanen could not confirm or deny whether Forb and the FSB operatives were one person.

On January 25, newspaper Kommersant reported that the head of the computer incidents investigation team at Kaspersky Lab Ruslan Stoyanov had been arrested for treason.

Kommersant’s sources indicated that Stoyanov’s arrest is tied to an investigation into the activity of Sergey Mikhaylov, the head of one of the departments of the FSB’s cybersecurity division. Mikhaylov has also been arrested.