The gift card carried "Xbox", which is a paid credit card, a chain of 25 numbers and crafts, and is also known as "5x5" code..This symbol was sent via e -mail, although it is not very different from the series of numbers and other letters on gift cards that are usually attached to the shelves near the payment boxes in CVS or Target stores, as it is presented.In many colors, as in the famous Rubik cube, it is sold on behalf of companies such as "Apple" and "Applebee's", "Disney" and "Domino", and any other company that may occur to you, including "Microsoft", which markets its cardsUnder the slogan "XBOSOS".Of course, the cards alone without the symbol have no value, but each "5x5" code equals a certain amount in dollars.
In this case, the "DD9J9-MXXXC-3Y6XD-3QH2C-PWDWZ" was equal to $ 15, and it can be used to buy any of the products that "Microsoft" online, from video games to "Office" and "Windows" and computers "and computers" and computers "Lenovo "Sonos" speakers, and others.
Consequently, these gift cards can be considered a type of digital currency, similar to "Bitcoin".This approach may seem ridiculous since gift cards are an old concept dating back to the time of BlackBuster to rent video movies, but in reality there is today a market on the Internet, as anyone can exchange gift cards cards with currencies, then transform their gainsTo money.Certainly, these markets attract speculators, as well as to the fraudsters, since these trading can be done without detecting identity.
Job and start
Volodimir Kvashuk received a code of $ 15 a few weeks before the Christmas of 2017, as part of another group of symbols whose total value is 300 dollars, but the engineer who is known as "Fova", a young man in the mid -twenties, did not pay the price of cardsXbox gifts himself, as these cards were not an early gift from his relatives for Christmas occasion.Kfashuk had begun shortly before work in full -time job at the headquarters of "Microsoft" in Redmond, Washington, as he was charged with verifying the electronic trade infrastructure in the company.
The task entrusted to his team focused on simulating purchases through the "Microsoft" electronic store to search for gaps in the sales system, which required many fake purchases from the store.For example, if Cavashok added a "del" computer to an electronic shopping cart, he can use a fake credit card provided by "Microsoft" to accomplish the purchase, then documents any mistakes that may permeate this process..Since the system realizes that the purchase is fake, the product he requested does not charge.At least this is what was supposed to happen.
Discover the code
But Kfashuk signed a software vulnerability that changed his life.That imbalance was very clear to the degree of idiot, and he could not force himself to inform his manager.He noticed that every time he tries to test the purchase of gift cards, the "Microsoft" store issues a real 5x5 "code", and he soon realized that he could generate an endless number of symbols, all of which are free of charge.
One of the senior former engineers in the Kfashuk team, asked not to be named, like all other sources in this report;Fear his name publicly related to the violations that occurred later, this programming gap likened to leave a bank in the ancient American West, its wardrobe is open, but in this case in the time of the "Halo" game (Halo).The former employee of "Microsoft" added that "sooner or later, someone will try to take twenty dollars.".He continued: "When he is not arrested, his tongue will be: I only need six people to empty all the treasury in one night, when none of the employees are here.".
Kfashuk started at a small level, and he was exporting Xbox cards with amounts ranging between 10 and 100 dollars, but his spoils increased rapidly, and when Federal agents arrested him after about two years, he had stolen more than 152 thousand "Xbox" gift cards with more value10.1 million dollars.He was spent from the profits he achieved, so he lives in a house price more than a million dollars, and plans to buy a chalet in the skate.But last November, a judge sentenced him to nine years in prison.
Thousands of documents
This report deals for the first time an in -depth coverage that sheds light on the size of the fraud processed by Kvashuk, and it is based on thousands of pages of documents submitted before the court, interviews with current and former employees in "Microsoft" and investigators related to the case, in addition to relatives and friends of Kfashuk, and revealsOn practices that included computers piracy, illegal gain from "Bitcoin", speculative using gift cards.At some point, Kfashuk circulated a huge number of "5x5" symbols, to the extent that the prosecution said that he was alone responsible for global fluctuations in the prices of gift cards from "Xbox" in the re -sale markets.When the prices were declining a lot, he refrained from selling;Hoping that this deficiency in gift cards will raise the price again on the market.
Michael Dion, the main public prosecutor in the criminal case directed by the government against Kfashuk, said what he did "ancient -class but modern technology.".
At a time when the spotlight on the digital currencies, this fraud and the following investigations of how a series of random numbers can be significant, such as "DD9J9-MXXXC-3Y6XD-3QH2C-PWDWZ", to include a real value, and also to what extent it is vulnerableFor manipulation.So Fashuk himself justified the investigators that he did not do any illegal work, because the digital currency that he withdrew from "Microsoft" is not considered "real money"..