US charges Russian spies and hackers over Yahoo hack affecting half a billion users
The indictments against two Russian spies and two criminal hackers are over 500 million Yahoo user accounts accessed in 2014
RUSSIAN spies and hackers allegedly involved in a Yahoo hack which affected millions of users have been charged by the US government.
The indictments against two Russian spies and two criminal hackers are over 500 million Yahoo user accounts accessed in 2014, a source familiar with the case told Reuters.
Officials say the hack targeted the email accounts of Russian and U.S. officials, Russian journalists, employees of financial services and other businesses.
The charges arise from a compromise of Yahoo user accounts that began at least as early as 2014.
Though the Justice Department has previously charged Russian hackers with cybercrime as well as hackers sponsored by the Chinese and Iranian governments this is the first criminal case brought against Russian government officials.
Acting Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord said: "We're here for one of the largest data breaches in US history.
"Today we are announcing the indictment of four individuals responsible for the 2014 hacking... of Yahoo, the theft of information about at least 500 million Yahoo accounts, and use of that information to obtain the contents of accounts at Yahoo and other providers."
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FBI executive assistant director Paul Abbate said: "We are extremely grateful as well to our international partners for their assistance and support leading up to these criminal charges today.
"Those partners include Canada's Royal Canadian Mounted Police and, as mentioned, the Toronto police service and their fugitive squad.
"As well, the United Kingdom's MI5 made substantial contributions to the advancement of this investigation also."
The content of at least 30 million accounts were accessed as part of a spam campaign and that at least 18 people who used other internet service providers, such as Google, were also victimised, the government charged.
The officers of the FSB, Russia's Federal Security Service, which is a successor to the KGB, were identified as Dmitry Dokuchaev and his superior, Igor Sushchin, the government said.
Alexsey Belan, who is on the list of most-wanted cyber criminals, and Karim Baratov, who was born in Kazakhstan but has Canadian citizenship, were also named in the indictment.
The Justice Department said Baratov was arrested in Canada on Tuesday and that his case is now pending with Canadian authorities.
Belan was arrested in an European country in June 2013 but escaped to Russia before he could be extradited to the United States, according to the Justice Department.
The 47-count indictment includes conspiracy, computer fraud and abuse, economic espionage, theft of trade secrets, wire fraud, access device fraud and aggravated identify theft.
The charges are not related to the hacking of Democratic emails that took place during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Intelligence agencies have said they were carried out by Russia in order to help the campaign of Republican President Donald Trump.
Yahoo said, when it announced the then-unprecedented breach last September, it was working with law enforcement authorities and believed the attack was state-sponsored.
The company announced a still-larger breach in December that occurred in 2013 and affected one billion accounts, though it has not linked that intrusion to the one in 2014.
The hacking conspiracy, which began as early as 2014, allowed Belan to use his relationship with the Russian spy agency and access to Yahoo's network to engage in financial crimes.
The breach announcements were the latest in a series of setbacks for the Internet pioneer, which has fallen on hard times in recent years after being eclipsed by younger, fast-growing rivals including Alphabet Inc's Google and Facebook Inc.
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