Our guys were just playing at being gangsters – the Yugoslavs had been thieving and killing in Europe for real over decades. They were seriously tough, and to this day, if you want to kill somebody in Bulgaria and you want the job done reliably and cheaply, then you hire a Serb. They are the best assassins.

There are two types of companies in the world: those that know they’ve been hacked, and those that don’t.

There are two types of companies in the world: those that know they've been hacked, and those that don't.

The Internet has fashioned a new and complicated environment for an age-old dilemma that pits the demands of security against the desire for freedom.

You don’t have to sleep with prostitutes or take drugs in order to have a relationship with organized crime. They affect our bank accounts. They affect our communications, our pension funds. They even affect the food that we eat and our governments.

The internet is fracturing into a series of huge country-based intranets, in which governments define, in the name of security, what is legitimate personal and intellectual communication, and what is not.

My father, a Russian translator, wanted to distinguish me by calling me Misha, the Russian diminutive of his name, Michael. My name and work as a writer specialising in the Balkans has created a myth that I have Slavic connections, but actually I am British.

Nonetheless, the gamers had taken up with gusto the challenge laid down by software manufacturers, and before long a significant subculture of cracker groups had flowered. Its members’ sole aim was to crack games and other software the minute they came onto the market and then parade their cracking skills to their peers.The cyber underworld was born, although it would quickly start fracturing into very different communities – some good, some bad.

A little of this caviar finds its way to the fish restaurants around Istanbul's Taksim Square, but the bulk is sent on to the United Arab Emirates to be enjoyed by wealthy Westerners and Arabs in the preposterous hotels that have set new standards in unnecessary opulence.

Would a Catholic turn down the chance to visit Lourdes? Or a Muslim an opportunity to see Mecca? Well, no self-respecting criminal would pass up the offer of a week in Odessa.