Russian Agents Were Behind Yahoo Hack, U.S. Says
Russian Agents Were Behind Yahoo Hack, U.S. Says
In a development that can only heighten the distrust between American and Russian authorities on cybersecurity, the Justice Department on Wednesday charged two Russian intelligence officers with directing a sweeping criminal conspiracy that broke into 500 million Yahoo accounts in 2014.
Details of the wide-ranging attack come as the United States government is investigating other Russian cyberattacks against American targets, including
the theft of emails last year from the Democratic National Committee and attempts to break in to state election systems. Investigators are also examining communications between associates of President Trump and Russian officials that occurred during the presidential campaign.
Yahoo Says It Was Hacked. Here’s How to Protect Yourself.
That American and Russian authorities are often at loggerheads in their approaches to criminal breaches was made clear in the indictment. The two Russian agents were supposed to be helping Americans hunt for hackers but were instead working against them.
Yahoo Says It Was Hacked. Here’s How to Protect Yourself.
Simple tips to follow if you think your personal information online has been exposed to hackers.
And one of the outside hackers, a Russian named Alexsey Belan, had been indicted twice before for three intrusions into American e-commerce companies and had been arrested in Europe, but escaped to Russia before he could be extradited. Prosecutors said they received no response to their requests to the Russian government to turn over Mr. Belan to the American authorities.
The hackers also used the Yahoo data to send spam and steal credit card and gift card information. In addition, they sought to break into at least 50 Google accounts, including those of Russian officials and employees of a Russian cybersecurity firm.
On Wednesday, prosecutors unsealed an indictment containing 47 criminal charges against the two agents of Russia’s Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., as well as two outside hackers with whom they worked with on the scheme, one of the largest known thefts of data from a private corporation.
This is the first time officials of Russia’s F.S.B. have been indicted on cybercrime charges in the United States, said Jack Bennett, special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s San Francisco office. Yahoo worked with the F.B.I. on the investigation for two years, he said.The two agents of the F.S.B. who were charged are Dmitry Aleksandrovich Dokuchaev, 33, a Russian national and resident, and Igor Anatolyevich Sushchin, 43, a Russian national and resident.
The other two defendants are Mr. Belan, 29, a Russian national and resident; and Karim Baratov, 22, a Canadian and Kazakh national and a resident of Canada. Mr. Baratov was arrested on Tuesday in Canada.
“The criminal conduct at issue, carried out and otherwise facilitated by officers from an F.S.B. unit that serves as the F.B.I.’s point of contact in Moscow on cybercrime matters, is beyond the pale,” the acting assistant attorney general, Mary B. McCord, said in a statement.
Yahoo disclosed the theft of the data last September and said it was working with law enforcement authorities to trace the perpetrators. The hackers were able to use the stolen information, which included personal data as well as encrypted passwords, to create a tool that let them access 32 million accounts.Read more click here
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