Israeli hacker Ehud Tenebaum suspected of leading multimillion-dollar international theft ring.
By YAAKOV LAPPINehud tenenbaum hacker 224.88(photo credit: Courtesy)
Israeli computer hacker Ehud Tenenbaum, better known as "The Analyzer," has been arrested in Canada on a US extradition warrant following suspicions that he led an international hacking ring that stole millions of dollars from financial bodies in several countries, including Russia, Sweden, the Netherlands and Turkey.
Tenenbaum is no stranger to prison - in 1998 he was arrested in Israel after breaking into the Pentagon computer system and Web sites hosted at a number of major American air force bases. He served 15 months of an 18-month prison sentence in Ramle Prison.
Tenenbaum, 29, who currently resides in Montreal and is originally from Hod Hasharon, was arrested while attempting to post bail of $30,000 Canadian in a Calgary police station, where he was has been held since August 28 due to a separate charge that he stole $1.8 million Canadian from a Canadian bank.
Federal Crown Prosecutor David Gates said the US government believed Tenenbaum was likely the mastermind of a global hacking group that broke into the computers of financial institutions to obtain the Personal Identification Numbers of credit and debit cards to sell them to others. The presiding judge turned down Tenenbaum's request for bail.
Tenenbaum's mother has denied that her son was guilty of criminal wrongdoing.
He was investigated a decade ago by ex-National Fraud Unit senior investigator Dep.-Cmdr (ret.) Boaz Guttman, then head of the Israel Police's Cyber Crime Unit.
On Sunday, Guttman described Tenenbaum as a "professional criminal" well-versed in how to deal with the police, but added that he was a "low-level" computer hacker.
"When he was arrested in '98 he chose to exercise his right to silence. He was 18 at the time - I have seen young hackers, they don't do that. Then he asked for a plea-bargain. He knew the police before he encountered us," Guttman recalled.
"Professional hackers that I know are not caught. The police don't get to them. Tenenbaum has no special sophistication. He's more like someone who robs a convenience store and gets captured on the CCTV camera," Guttman added.
In the late 1990s, the US sent a large entourage of FBI, CIA, NSA, US Army and Air Force investigators to Israel to look into Tenenbaum's hacking activities, Guttman said. "They were here for two weeks in a hotel near the US Embassy," he added, but the Americans were unable to get anything out of Tenenbaum.
In 1998, a crisis broke out between Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq and UNSCOM weapons inspectors, which was to deteriorate into a US-led bombing campaign.
"When the US goes to war, they put up thousands of Web sites that disappear after the conflict. They are designed to allow soldiers to stay in contact with family and friends, who receive e-mails and information - none of it operational - on their loved ones. The smallest unit that goes to war has its own site," Guttman said.
These were the sites targeted by Tenenbaum at that time, leading the Americans to first believe that the Iraqis had sabotaged their communications. They then traced the damage to Tenenbaum and two California residents.
"Dvora Berliner, the Kfar Saba District Judge who presided over Tenenbaum's appeal, described his activities as 'electronic vandalism,' and that's what they are," Guttman said. "The Americans had been operating a system called Solaris - every novice computer student could bring it down, and that's what Tenenbaum did."
In Israel, Tenenbaum broke into the Web sites of the Knesset, the Sde Boker Heritage Center and Beit Hanassi, stealing passwords.
After Tenenbaum was released from prison, Guttman recommended that the IDF's Intelligence Corps Unit 8200 consider him as a potential recruit. Instead he ended up serving as a cook for the Military Police for eight months.
After being released from the IDF, Tenenbaum was unable to find a job at a hi-tech company.
"He ended up in Canada where he checked Web sites for security breaches. He was filmed stealing money from an ATM machine, after breaking into the bank's computer system and increasing the money in an account," Guttman said.
Using Internet transcripts, Guttman said, police found an excerpt of Tenenbaum's communications with fellow hackers in California in which he wrote that his dream was to steal a million dollars from a bank and emigrate to Brazil. "He did it, but he got caught," Guttman added.
"He wore the uniform of an Israeli prison inmate, spent time in a Canadian prison, and now he will probably see an American prison," Guttman said.
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