Five Eastern European men have been charged with operating a global hacking network that siphoned hundreds of millions of dollars from top financial institutions. SiliconANGLE Contributing Editor John Casaretto offered his insights into the operation in a recent Q&A on NewsDesk.

John says that the scheme was orchestrated by four Russian nationals, a Ukrainian man and a Miami resident by the name of Albert Gonzalez. The group successfully infiltrated Nasdaq stock exchange, Citibank, PNC Bank, Heartland Payment Systems, 7-Eleven, JCPenney, Hannaford Brothers and a number of other companies that were not named.

According to John, two of the men that allegedly participated in the operation specialize in SQL injection attacks. The other four were responsible for providing the anonymous web services used for the attacks, harvesting data from hacked networks, and selling stolen information on the black market.

Five of the culprits are facing decades in prison. The sixth has already been sentenced to 20 years behind bars for separate crimes.

US Department of Justice officials have disclosed that the team sold European credit card numbers for as much as $50 apiece, five times the price of American numbers. John explains that European cards are more sought-after for two reasons: there are less of them on the market, and a sizable portion of them are ‘smart cards’ that are harder to crack than traditional variants.

SQL injection attacks have cost financial service providers hundreds of millions of dollars, but the industry as a whole is facing fewer threats than the retail sector. A security firm called Imperva found that the average ecommerce site is hit by twice as many SQL injections as other websites.

Click the video below for the complete analysis.