You can get anything you want. The discs are crammed with pirated versions of expensive programs worth hundreds or thousands of dollars. Russia's anarchic computer culture is fertile ground for hacking, piracy, credit-card fraud and other digital crime. Gorbushka, with its vendors hustling at makeshift tables, is just one of the more obvious examples. But among them are some of the world's busiest digital vandals, pirates, thieves and spies.
Police say the number of computer-related crimes continues to rise in Russia.
More than 200 cases were reported in the first three months of this year - more than in all of 1999. Typical computer crimes include stealing credit card numbers sent to online businesses, software piracy, stealing passwords to get free time online and theft of business information. The group, which operated from December to April, stole numbers from more than 5,400 cards belonging mostly to foreigners, police said. Working with an insider, hackers bypassed the security system of the huge natural gas monopoly Gazprom last year and temporarily seized control of the system that regulates gas flows in pipelines, according to the Interior Ministry. Officials did not say whether the break-in caused any damage.