What kind of Hall?

In Bonn, the court began in the case of hacking of Russian blogs: reporting "Medusa"

In Germany, the trial of Hacker Hall began, suspected of hacking the mail and “living magazines” of Russian bloggers. The case on Hell was brought up at the request of the opposition Alexei Navalny, who, among other bloggers, suffered from the actions of the hacker. The Russian, who was living in Bonn, Sergei Maksimov, who appeared on the bench of the defendants as the accused, claims that he and Hall are different people. At the request of Medusa, journalist Olga Kuzmenkova visited the first day of the court session.

Sergei Maksimov is a man with a completely not memorable appearance. In May, he was 41 years old, he was slightly stooped, medium height, with dark hair, and, apparently, began to bald early.

He is immediately accused under three articles of the German Criminal Code: “Ditling Data”, “Insult”, “Fake documents”. The most strict punishment for these articles is 3 years of imprisonment, but you can also get rid of a fine.

While the court session is being held, Maximov reads the case file and chews chewing gum, without raising his eyes on witnesses. He refused to ask questions and participate in the process. He does not pay much attention to the trial: on the first day, three people were interrogated, but not one of them aroused interest in him.

During the break, I go to Maksimov in complete confidence that he would refuse to talk to me. However, instead, he begins to answer my questions. And he says that everything that happens has nothing to do with justice, because he is not a hacker Hall.

- I just had a Hull nickname on the Internet for a long time, and I also live in Germany. But the prosecutor's office believes that this is enough for the charge. These people do not understand the Internet at all, and at the same time do such a thing.

“You seem to know Haulle Hall?” How did you meet him?

-When the police began to show interest in me because of this story, I left Hall a message on his blog. After that, he wrote to me, sent some materials so that I could defend myself. I rather have a good attitude towards him, after all, he helped me.

While we communicate, Maximov is slowly covered with perspiration and constantly walks around me in circles as if talking to himself.

"Virtual Inquisition"

Haker Hall became known at the end of the zero after hacking several “living magazines” and e -mail. Among the victims of Hell were journalists Andrei Malgin and Vladimir Poblovsky, State Duma deputy Victor Alksnis, Valeria Novodvorskaya and Konstantin Borova, writer Boris Akunin and oppositionist Alexei Navalny.

Hull made his visiting card the image of Musketeer D` Aartagnan performed by Mikhail Boyarsky - he placed him on the userpiks of his victims, often accompanying the hacked pages with the signature “You are all fagots, and I am Dural”. In addition, Hall compared himself to the medieval inquisitor Thomas Torquemada, who became famous for excessive cruelty and the creation of a scaffold, which allowed four people to execute each time.

Hall celebrated his hacker victories on the blog with wild notes on “Albansky” with such an abundance of obscene vocabulary, insults and homo-erotic subtext that the records did not seem ridiculous, even despite the laughter remarks accompanying them (Hyhe’s interjection Hell, as a rule, completed every paragraph of fresh slips). In the posts, such characteristics of victims as the “False Pendorgast”, “Putting the Latvian Pimple”, “Barathadatyatnaya U ****”, “Cowardly and Treak Enuriznik”, “Homesic politicians” were repeated. Fricigs waving phalloimitators, “Botox penny”, “Dumb Sasacher”, “Purulent scum and carrion”.

As Navalny says , so that the criminal case against Hell in Germany will become possible, all the notes of the Hacker, accumulated in several years, had to be collected and translated into German. “The man who did this almost lost his mind,” says the opposition. Navalny himself could not be attended by, instead of him, the representative acted.

The interlocutor of the Medusa from the Navalny Foundation’s investigation department, digging in Hell's records, admits that the translation eventually was much softer than the original. “It is impossible to fully translate into English the expression“ gender ass ”, and when the“ ass ”is written through ё, there is absolutely no sense in this,” he says.

Among other victims, Hell was also the blogger-thousand Igor Petrov . He was one of the first to write a statement to the police on a cracker. Eight years later, Petrov was summoned to the German court in Bonn. A middle -aged man in glasses told how Hell took his mail and LJ. As it turned out, the hacker forged Petrov’s passport and wrote a compassionate letter to the German postal service GMX.de, on which the blogger electronic box was registered. In a message sent with him, the Igor.petrov.1@gmail.com created by him, Hell wrote that he was a Russian citizen and that he lost access to mail. As evidence of his personality, he attached a scan of a fake passport. A good -natured technical support employee believed Hell and sent him the data of Petrov. After that, the “hacker” removed the contents of the LJ Bloger-Tysychnik, in which he wrote “Poems, Stories and posts about how he spent the day.”

“Hall devoted two or three cute posts to my person,” Petrov said in German.

- What does the "cute" mean? - did not understand the chairman.

- Well, if you read his notes, you imagine what he wrote. But I do not perceive this as an insult, rather as a historical document.

The presiding judge called Petrov to himself and asked him to see the screenshots of Hell's entries. From the trial of the judge, his unclear and slightly surprised muttering was heard. Apparently, he began to imprudently read out the screenshot aloud: “Ha-te-te-pae? El-zhei-Russia-ryz-yuzers-eee ... Torquemada? Shace (“shit” in German), hehe ”.

“I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the translation, something like“ I can’t look at this face, run to the toilet and I am vibrating, ”the girl whispered in the hall, which sequentially translating the German speech to her Russian-speaking neighbor.

Custom hacks

Hacker's invulnerability, mocking antics and arrogant hacks, which followed one after another for several years, the choice of victims, more than half of which were journalists or opposition politicians, interviews of the Cubremes media - all this contributed to the emergence of versions about Hell's connections with the Kremlin.

The most radical suspected that no Hell Hell really exists and that it was a collective pseudonym of Russian special services. Others said that Hall is just the name of a blogger who mocks the opposition and talks about hacks committed by special services. There was also a version that the FSB officers were passing on Hall passwords from blogs, and he does only a small job. Someone believed that Hall is a “salary hacker”, receiving orders and money from the presidential administration. No one had evidence of any of these versions, all guesses. There is no evidence to this day; The German prosecutor’s office was not at all interested in this part of the story, said Navalny Medusa.

“As far as I know, there is no this [connection with the Kremlin or special services] in the case file. This is an assumption. But the Germans are not interested in these things - they are up to the lantern: the Kremlin, not the Kremlin. They are only interested in one thing: a person lives who violates the criminal legislation of Germany, hacks the IMILS. This is a serious crime. I do not think that he [Hell] was even interrogated about this, ”Navalny continues.

The opposition himself is confident that the hacker was connected with the Russian security forces: the most famous “hacking” of Navalny’s mail occurred after he had searches with computers with the seizure of computers. After some time, Hall “hacked” his accounts, and the contents of Navalny’s mailbox appeared on the Internet. Based on correspondence to the opposition, several more criminal cases were opened.

In one of his interviews, Hall explained the hacks of Navalny with a sincere interest in “this muddy citizen”. In another, he said that he considers Navalny “someone like Mavrodi”, which “converts the stupidity and naivety of people into money, is even worse than MMM.” At the same time, Hell swore that he had never published Navalny's correspondence. According to him, he just showed the contents of the mailbox to several “acquaintances and friends”, and one of them does not know who-posted the archive on the Internet. The hacker refused to name the names of his “friends”.

"Collect things, our cooperation is over"

Hall hunting began long before he crossed the road to Navalny.

The journalists who suffered from his hacks Prelilovsky and Malgin managed to create an impressive dossier on the hacker and came to the conclusion that Hall is Sergey Maksimov. They collected the information from the notes from the records that the user under the name Hell left on several forums and blogs even before the cracker appeared in the rune, which terrifies the entire “live magazine” (or even before he himself became this cracker).

For example, it was possible to establish that after moving to Germany, Maksimov first lived in Bayroit with his family, and then moved to Nuremberg and was a trainee in the social service there.

As it turned out at the trial, Maximov worked in Germany under the program for dysfunctional citizens experiencing problems with employment. In the framework of this program, people receive a symbolic salary of one and a half euros per hour and work experience, with which they can later apply for a normal place with real money. Maximov did not have a specific circle of tasks, he worked with mail, in technical support, and in accounting. Despite the status of the trainee, he had access to the passport table database: to documents and addresses of citizens. Earlier, Hall himself mentioned the access to data and that he works in the office on the second floor in correspondence with the Jason user, who later hit him with a knife in a personal meeting in Nuremberg.

The work of Maksimov in the office did not last a very long time, his former boss said in court. According to the witness Hans Kitterer, once he caught Maximov to watch Russian pornography right at the workplace. This turned out after warnings about the viruses that were infected with video for adults were infected on the computer’s computer computers in the office. Kitterer went into the office where Maksimov watched porn, and told him: "Gather your things, our cooperation is completed."

The young man collected things and left, but after a while he again got into the same social service under the same program for socially disadvantaged citizens. This time he worked in another department and no longer intersected with Kitterer. At the end of practice, the new chief Maksimov wrote him a positive characteristic, noting that he was an extremely polite young man and never refuses help to anyone.

"Seryozha, come out"

The same fight in Nuremberg with the Jason user helped bloggers who conducted an investigation against Hell to go on his trail.

“In 2002 [he] received a stab in the back from one of the bloggers (literally) and innocently told about it on his blog. This was the first thread, ”says Medusa Andrei Malgin, who at one time even promised 15 thousand dollars to the one who would bring Hell to him. -The second fact that I knew for sure is that in the late 90s this person studied at the Historical and Archive Institute of the Russian State University. I sent a person to the archive, and the personal affairs of students, approximately suitable for the biography details, were approximately suitable from his own posts in blogs. Well, gradually, by exclusion, they reached the only candidate. ”

The user Hall at different forums really reported that he was an archivist by profession, studied at the RSUSU that it was a beautiful building at Nikolskaya, that he and his classmates spent a lot of time in the courtyard of the institute, he also called the names of some teachers and told how everyone was amused by their graduate, a popularizer of history Edward Radzinsky.

When checking the materials of the Archive of the RSUSU, they drew attention to the documents of a person with the name Sergei Maksimov. It became clear why user Hall, to whom the forums sometimes turned by the name of Sergei, from time to time, seemed to be Maxim. He was struck by the base of the passports and found out the circumstances of the move to Germany.

In the investigation of Preklovsky, among other things, it is said that the elusive hacker, who repeatedly spoke out of Jews, was a Jewish on his mother - the family emigrated to Germany "on the Jewish line". In addition, Prelilovsky and Malgin managed to get the Moscow address of Maksimov, his first address in Germany and the address at which he lived later. Some of the bloggers even went to Hell's house in Bonn and photographed the usual three-story yellow building and the surname "Maximov" on the intercom.

Hell's deanonymization turned into a kind of entertainment of his most embittered opponents. They even created a blog with the mocking name "Seryozha, come out!" And the little things began to collect there, on which the "hacker" pierced again and again. Hull refuted the collected information and at the very least tried to confuse traces: for example, he said that he composed all the personal details on the go to place his interlocutors on the forums, and that he actually studied at Moscow State University, and RSU mentioned exclusively for trolling purposes.

Hall identification

Despite the fact that the bloggers collected many evidence, the German police did not start the case on Maximov. “My lawyer contacted the representative office of German law enforcement agencies at the German Embassy in Moscow and transferred some data there, up to the technical logs of his blog,” recalls Malgin, who was one of the first to write a statement to German law enforcement agencies. - I don’t know anything at all about what the German police did. All these years I had a feeling that I had not done anything. ”

As Navalny Meduza said, his statement was given only the second time. To do this, the opposition had to acquire a lawyer in Germany-he pressed the German prosecutor’s office and was able to seek a search with Maximov (Navalny himself does not call him a name in a conversation due to the ban on the law enforcement agencies of Germany).

A police officer named Nolden, who came home to Maximov among other law enforcement officers, told in court that the door to his apartment had to break. Maximov did not open them, despite the fact that he was inside. During the search, the police found a notebook signed by Hall-it contained mentions of Navalny and other victims of the hacker-many screenshots of the Torquemada blog, a document with the name “Gell Geving”, several sheets with IP addresses, a printout of a fake passport of a blogger Igor Petrov. The police seized computers from Maximov, CD- and hard drives, floppy disks and other information carriers (as Maximov himself says, “everything was taken out!”).

According to Nolden, she checked the contents of the hard drive according to the key word “Navalny” and found more than a thousand of his letters, and twice as many letters to Julia Navalny. Search by other names of Hall victims also gave a positive result. In addition, it turned out that Maximov actively used e -mail with the name Hall and Torquemada. The secret question at Hell's post office was "What is my name?" And he had the established answer "Maximov."

- Do you think Hall and Mr. Maksimov are one person? The judge asked the witness.

- There are too many points that indicate this. Petrov’s passport, Imila named Hell, Helloween, a control question, many other people's people, including Navalny, correspondence with the Jason user, work and life in Nuremberg. Everything coincides. I am convinced that Maximov is Hell. I can’t allow anything else, ”said the police officer.

After the speech, Nolden the prosecutor reminded Maximov that he has the right to admit his guilt and thus achieve mitigation of punishment. “The longer he is silent, the worse for him,” said the state prosecutor.

Maximov met his words without any emotions. As soon as he left the court building, he again stated that Sergey Maximov and Hell are different people. According to him, the documents found from him during the search, he received from a hacker who helped him prepare for a court session. And the fact that during a search and study of his computer, the police did not find a letter from Hell in his mail, Maximov explains them with complete security.

The lawyer of Navalny Folkhard Schreiber could not hide the victorious smile, learning that Maximov denies the accusation against him. “Have you ever seen a fish hanging on a hook? He [Maximov] has already swallowed the hook, but is still trying to jump from him, ”the lawyer said.

The next meeting in the case of Hacker Hell is July 8.

Olga Kuzmenkova

Bonn