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6 A FAMILY AFFAIR

The First Worldwide Carders' Conference celebrated CarderPlanet's first birthday. It was unique and remarkable. By 2002 Odessa had calmed down: there were even signs of normality. Its iconic boulevard, Deribasovskaya, was brimming with street vendors, shops and fancy restaurants. Surrounded by the four-leaved clover and Gaelic inscrip- tions of Mick O'Neill's, one of post-communist Ukraine's first fake Oirish pubs, an inner core of Ukraine's top hackers, known as The Family, discussed the goals of the conference. Among them were top figures such as Auditor, Rayden and Bigbuyer, along with the moving spirits of the event: Boa, a communications and security boffin with a distinctive white beard, and the energetic if slightly juvenile Script.

Over the next three days in several different locations around the city they drank and sang, but above all they discussed the short- and long-term development of their nascent website, CarderPlanet, which was already changing the nature of cybercrime around the world.

General discussions were held in The Odessa Hotel, the most expen- sive in the city at the time. A fine example of ugly post-communist chic, the tall building did at least stand on a pier right opposite the Potemkin Steps, made famous in Eisenstein's masterpiece of early Soviet film, Battleship Potemkin. Those topics in which all delegates took part at The Odessa included the need to understand the technical details of the lesser credit cards, such as JCB and Diners, which, it was felt, had been neglected in favour of the more lucrative Visa and MasterCard franchises. It was also agreed to develop or strengthen new networks of people who could 'cash out' stolen credit cards in regions such as South America, Oceania and Africa. After all, somebody had

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