Yahoo suffered from a massive hack back in 2014 which affected some 500 million of its users. A hacker-for-hire involved in this hack was apprehended and eventually tried. He has now been sentenced to five years in prison for his role in the hack which is believed to have been orchestrated by Russian spies. The person in question, Karim Baratov, maintains that he wasn’t aware that he was working for Russian spies since he didn’t look into customers who hired his services.
The DOJ mentions that Baratov’s name came up when two Russian nationals were charged with being behind the 2014 Yahoo hack. They were the ones who provided him with the data from the breach which Baratov then used to hack into the email accounts of American and Russian journalists, employees of private businesses, government officials, and other potentially important persons.
Baratov relied on phishing tactics to obtain the targets’ passwords which he then passed on to his Russian contacts in return for money. He is believed to have made $1.1 million doing this and spent that money to buy a house and cars.
The court has now ordered Baratov to pay a fine of up to $2.25 million and to also pay a restitution to his victims if he has any assets left after that. The 23 year old has also been sentenced to five years in prison.
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