Vladimir Levin
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Vladimir Levin is a character in Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina. He is the prosperous landowner who felt that democracy was the answer to the great divide that existed between the aristocracy and the peasants in Tsarist Russia.
Vladimir Levin is also the handle of the mathematician who is alleged to be the mastermind of the Russian hacker gang that stole $10 million from Citibank's computer system. The bank was hacked from AO Saturn, a St. Petersburg, Russia, computer firm. Levin used his office computer to hack into Citibank's cash management system and transferred money to Finland, Israel, and California. Levin and his gang were apprehended by Interpol at Heathrow Airport. All but $400,000 of the stolen $10 million was recovered by the authorities. For two years after his arrest, Levin resisted extradition to the United States, but lost his case. He was then sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to pay Citibank $240,015, his share from the heist. Since this hack, Citibank began using the Dynamic Encryption Card. This security system is so tight that no other financial institution in the world has it. A 1995 Byte Magazine Article (http://www.byte.com/art/9511/sec3/art11.htm) has more detail, but to this day, the exact method he used to obtain the passwords is unknown. The hacker likely chose this name for its Robin Hood-like associations.
References
- TLC: Hackers' Hall of Fame (http://tlc.discovery.com/convergence/hackers/bio/bio_09.html)