From Russia with Code: The next generation of cybercrime

In an empty Japanese restaurant on the northeast outskirts of Moscow, Nikita Kislitsin, a 28-year-old Russian with blond hair, blue eyes and translucent skin, is showing me how to pull off a multimillion-dollar cyberheist on his MacBook Air. The ace hacker is methodical; his slim fingers click quickly through a series of applications to activate a virtual private network that will blur our real location from prying eyes.

“Which IP address should we use?” Kislitsin asks. Kislitsin was the editor in chief of Russia’s Hacker magazine for six years before taking a job with Group-IB, a private Russian internet-security firm. We peruse a list of half a dozen international locales like a pair of newlyweds picking through possible honeymoon destinations. “Chicago,” I decide — and with one click we’ve transported ourselves from Russia’s capital to America’s heartland. Now, with our location cloaked, we can operate on the fringes of the law with impunity.