Hacker Alexey Ivanov was lured to the United States and snared in a high-stakes cyber-sting. The FBI says he got what he deserved. But Ivanov says his gamble paid off. In the end, he got what he wanted all along. What do you think? 　

　Ivanov, then a 20-year-old computer programmer from Chelyabinsk, Russia, had flown to Seattle¹ 1to apply for a job with a company called Invita Security. To the young Russian, Invita promised the dream job. The company was clearly entrepreneurial — entrepreneurial enough to seek out the services of this skilled hacker who worked in an abandoned factory halfway around the world. They even promised to pay his airfare and to pick him up at the Seattle airport. At Ivanov’s suggestion, the company encouraged him to bring along a fellow programmer, Vasiliy Gorshkov. When the two Russians arrived, their Invita hosts explained what they were looking for: a few good hackers who could break into the networks of potential customers as part of an effort to persuade those companies to hire Invita to keep hackers out. Ivanov was familiar with the tactic. 　

　As Ivanov, Gorshkov and two American business types sat at a table in a Seattle office, Gorshkov regaled the interviewers with tales of his hacking exploits, and Ivanov allowed himself to dream of a better life. The interviewers asked their guests to demonstrate some of their skills, and the two Russians took turns logging in to their own network back in Chelyabinsk. Ivanov knew that he and Gorshkov were good, so when his hosts appeared to be impressed, Ivanov was not surprised. 　

　The big surprise would come later, when the two Russians were being driven to their lodgings. The car stopped suddenly; the doors flew open, and Ivanov heard someone say: “FBI² . Get out of the car with your hands behind your back.” It was then that he remembered something he had heard about America: it was the kind of place where anything could happen. Ivanov and Gorshkov were charged with conspiracy, computer fraud, hacking and extortion. Gorshkov was jailed in Seattle and Ivanov was flown east, to Connecticut, to be tried in the home state of the Online Information Bureau — one of several companies whose servers he had breached.

　The federal agents who arrested the Russians claimed that the Russians had tried to extort money from scores of U.S. companies. As it turned out, most of the allegations were right on the money. Ivanov eventually admitted to hacking into 16 companies. He served three years and eight months in jail and owed more than US$800 000 in restitution. 　

　The Drama of the Seattle sting is the stuff of suspense novels ³but the courtroom machinations will more likely appear in law school lectures on international search and seizure. Today, with the smoke cleared, the most significant gain from the Ivanov case may be the legal milestones marked when courts upheld the right of federal agents to seize evidence remotely, and to charge foreign cybercriminals in U.S. courts. But despite those rulings, the case also leaves important cyberlaw questions unanswered — particularly in the area of uniform international rules for Internet search and seizure.　

　But for hackers, some of them admit that the most captivating aspects of cybercrime are psychological. As one of them put it, “The thing that fascinated me here was that in Internet crimes you can have a kid, basically, sitting in his basement halfway around the world, and with the click of a mouse, he can cause incredible concern, fear and economic damage all across the country. And the person who is doing it doesn’t really see the results. It can be very easy for someone like that to view what they’re doing as a game.”　

　For Alexey Ivanov personally, the story of his hacking, his crimes, his arrest and his release from prison ends in a place that he finds perfectly satisfactory. Now he is happily working with a company where his talent can be used for the benefit of society. 　

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