Yahoo revealed several months ago that it was the victim of a massive cyberattack back in 2014 that left some 500 million user accounts compromised. The company said that it suspected that state-sponsored hackers were behind the attack. The United States Justice Department has been investigating this matter and it has now decided to indict four Russians over the cyberattack, two of them actually work for Russian’s FSB intelligence agency.
The Justice Department today announced that it’s indicting four Russians in connection with the Yahoo attack. Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin – the FSB spies – are included in that list. The United States is of the view that both of them were directly involved in the cyberattack. This happens to be the first time that the country has directly indicted Russian officials with a cybercrime.
The other two hackers on the list include Alexsey Belan and Karim Baratov, both are said to have been hired to help out with this cyberattack. However, Baratov may be the only one who gets to face the music given that he was arrested in Canada yesterday. The United States has no extradition treaty with Russia so the hackers that remain in the country will most likely not be handed over to the United States to go through the court system.
The charges that they have been indicted on include wire fraud, economic espionage, trade secret theft aside from several hacking charges. These indictments will mean little to the hackers that are in Russia but the increasing travel limitations and sanctions that the U.S. has been placing might make life a bit troublesome for them.
Filed in . Read more about Cyberattacks and Yahoo. Source: justice.gov