Excellent New York Times article gives an excellent glimpse into Russian hacker operations and lifestyle. Interesting how hacking/spamming, according to the article, has been adopted by the government but "civilians" are used as a front:

Computer security researchers have raised a more sinister prospect: that criminal spamming gangs have been co-opted by the intelligence agencies in Russia, which provide cover for their activities in exchange for the criminals’ expertise or for allowing their networks of virus-infected computers to be used for political purposes — to crash dissident Web sites, perhaps.

At RSA in San Francisco a few years ago, Colin Powell was asked why he didn't, as Secretary of State, ask Russia to crack down on hackers.  Secretary Powell explained that he did but the response from his Russian counterpart was, "Your president [Bush] has approval ratings in the 40s and you're telling me what to do?"