I looked up the hacker's full name in russian - Maxim Igorevich Popov - and found a ukrainian news article dated as back as 2001, the year when this all started

I looked up the hacker's full name in russian - Maxim Igorevich Popov - and found a ukrainian news article dated as back as 2001, the year when this all started. So technically the Wired's article wasn't the first public mention of the incident, but the first big and full story. Here's the old article itself: http://fakty.ua/96374-grazhdaninu-ukrainy-kotorogo-fbr-obvinyaet-vo-vzlome-kompyuternoj-sistemy-banka-quot-vestern-yunion-quot-grozyat-20-let-tyurmy-i-polmilliona-dollarov-shtrafa http://fakty.ua/96374-grazhdaninu-ukrainy-kotorogo-fbr-obvin... It's in Russian and has some interesting stuff, like details from Popov's mom and dad (!), and it mostly covers the events that led to Popov's imprisonment. The article is quite long, but some stuff like Popov's background and stuff that's missing from Wired's article >Popov studied English and German languages in Kyiv National Linguistic University >He was already married by the time the shit went down >His parents didn't know he was a proficient hacker, they thought he was just a regular user