Justice Department indicts four men, including two who worked for the KGB’s successor, for allegedly pulling off the second-largest online breach in history.
The US Department of Justice indicts four men for the second-largest online hack in history.
The Yahoo hacking drama just swerved into James Bond territory.
The Justice Department on Wednesday said it’s indicted four hackers responsible for the second-largest online breach in history. Two of the alleged hackers were Russian spies under the Federal Security Service — the country’s FBI equivalent that’s better known as the FSB — while the other two were identified as hired criminals.
The spies wanted dirt on politicians, while the hackers for hire scavenged through the spoils for profits, the Justice Department said. The four were charged with wire fraud, trade secret theft and economic espionage.
Karim Baratov, one of the alleged hackers based in Canada, was arrested on Tuesday, while the other three Russian hackers could be protected from a complicated extradition process.
„The involvement and direction of FSB officers with law enforcement responsibilities makes this conduct that much more egregious,“ said Acting Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord during a press conference on Wednesday. „There are no free passes for foreign state-sponsored criminal behavior. “
The indictments offer a tiny measure of closure for Yahoo, which has wrestled over the last several months with revelations of massive security breaches. When Yahoo in September disclosed a 2014 hack , it was deemed the worst cyberattack ever. But three months later, the company outdid itself by disclosing a separate incident from 2013 that left 1 billion — yes, billion — accounts exposed.
Beyond that, Wednesday’s news marks yet another incident involving Russia hackers, who are also believed to have meddled in the presidential election last year by accessing emails from the Democratic National Committee, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her campaign manager, John Podesta. It was enough that former President Barack Obama leveled sweeping sanctions against Russia for its cyberattacks.
A two-year investigation by the FBI’s San Francisco branch found evidence of Russian spies Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin helping to break into Yahoo to steal information from US government officials, Russian dissidents and journalists. The Yahoo breach is the largest hacking case ever handled by the US government.
