The goal is ( for the hacker) to acquire your email and password then run around trying to get into your banking system(s) and also use your information to resell to other scammers -- in Russia there is a mini industry of hackers reselling your information - a common scam is to try and sell access to porn websites and get a hold of you cc # once they have it , your done
I hear that people monitoring Russian websites where they exchange information on hacked information is how security personnel discovered that Target and Nieman Marcus were hacked --the hacked companies didn't even know they had been hacked they had to be informed 3rd hand that there was a breach in their system
Make all your passwords different for everything , banking especially
You will find that Russia and some former soviet block countries are the center of all this activity , where I can only assume it's just about state sanctioned , allowed , and or ignored - good old Russians