Underground hacking groups do exist that are paid to steal your personal data. These groups can target anyone. The high profile case of Michael Haephrati gave us a look into this secret hackers world.

Michael Haephrati, a computer programmer, originally created the Trojan to spy and harass his former in-laws. It was his method of revenge. His wife, Ruth Brier-Haephrati saw the business opportunity in selling this capability to other people and firms.

Michael Haephrati and his wife Ruth Brier-Haephrati created software designed to steal the intellectual property of any individual or company a “business subscriber” paid them to. They sold secret correspondence, documents, economic data, and intellectual property obtained from the computer systems of individuals and firms targeted by Haephratis subscribers.

Here is how they did it.

For about 2 years, between 2003 and 2005, Haephrati would send an email to an individual that a subscriber of his wanted to steal information from. The email would be of a lucrative business opportunity from a known associate. If the person responded to the email, their computer would be infected with a Trojan. If the person did not respond to the email, then Haephrati would send the person a CD by regular mail that had a hidden Trojan.

The Trojan software let Haephrati record key-strokes (a key-logger) and had the capability of spying on what someone was doing on their computer in real time. It would scan the computer an automatically FTP files to storage servers located in the U.S., Israel, and other countries.

The police said that some of the items stolen were marketing plans, employee information and pay slips, and business plans. The stolen information was then sold to competitors. Police said that over 12 gigabytes of data was stolen from victims before they were able to shut Haephrati down.

Subscribers of Haephratis used the service to gain economic advantage of their competition.

A subscription to Haephratis didn’t come cheap. Haephratis charged a business customer $3,500 (U.S. dollars) to create a customized software program and to make the initial install on the victim’s computer. The monthly fee was then $900 to maintain the infrastructure used to collect, store, and forward the secretly acquired data on a monthly basis.

The cost to victims of Haephrati’s were huge. They lost their best marketing plans, new secret products in the pipe-line they were working on, and even lost the trust of their employees’ because of stolen employees’ personal data. All of this theft was facilitated by what are known as underground servers. The following price list was found on underground servers in 2007.

Phishing Web site hosting”per site $4 – $6 Yahoo Mail cookie exploit”advertised to facilitate full access when successful $4 U.S.-based credit card with card verification value $2 – $7 An identity (including U.S. bank account, credit card, date of birth, and government-issued identification number) $15 – $19 List of 28,000 e-mails $6 UK-based credit card with card verification value $3 – $13 Skype accounts $13 Online banking account with a $9,500 balance $400 Valid Yahoo and Hotmail e-mail cookies $4 Compromised computers $7 – $21 World of Warcraft accounts”one month duration $11 Verified PayPal account with balance (balance varies) $11 – $60 Unverified PayPal account with balance (balance varies) $13

Haephrati may have never been caught if it wasn’t for his own stupidity. He continued to harass his former in-laws by taking his former father-in-law’s private work and posting it publicly on the Internet to defame his person and character. His former father-in-law went to the police in November of 2004.

The police were able to trace the Trojan back to Haephrati’s business by using their own anti-hacker computer forensic tools.

In 2005, Michael Haephrati and his wife were arrested by British police in London and extradited to Israeli where they were found guilty of economic and industrial espionage.

Word on the street is that the Haephrati’s were given a secret deal with the Israeli government. He would train law enforcement and spies to use this technology in exchange for their freedom.