Ukrainian Man Arrested in Connection with TJX

Via Boston.com -

Authorities have zeroed in on a Ukrainian man they suspect played a key role in the sale of many credit card numbers stolen from TJX Cos. in what is considered the biggest corporate data breach to date.

Officials hope the recent arrest of Maksym Yastremskiy will be a breakthrough in the investigation of who hacked into systems at TJX and other companies, said Greg Crabb, a program manager in the global investigations division of the US Postal Inspection Service. The service is among various law enforcement agencies trying to track down hackers who made off with more than 45 million credit and debit card numbers from TJX starting in 2005.

Crabb said Yastremskiy allegedly sold card numbers through online forums hosted overseas, sometimes in Cyrillic or that were password protected. He is likely the largest seller of stolen TJX numbers, Crabb said.

Prices ranged from $20 to $100 per stolen card, and the cards were sold in batches of up to 10,000, depending on factors like the credit limits of the consumer accounts being traded. Crabb said Yastremskiy is associated with at least one other Ukrainian man previously charged with similar crimes, though unrelated to the TJX case.

"These guys are selling the good stuff," Crabb said.

It's unclear whether Yastremskiy is the mastermind behind the TJX breach itself. Yastremskiy's capture was first reported several weeks ago, though a link to TJX hasn't been made until now. Turkish police arrested him at a nightclub in the resort of Kemer, according to a French summary of a report by Turkish news agency Anatolia. The agency quoted a police official who said Yastremskiy is "one of the world's important and well-known computer pirates."

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This is good news indeed. Is this guy the mastermind behind the hack? Off the top of my head, I would say most likely not...but he is in the middle tier at least and he might know someone in a higher tier.

The July arrest of the ring in FL was a very low level tier arrest...but just like in a classic narcotics bust, they are walking up the stack (or chain).