On Wednesday, Department of Justice officials announced they had charged four people – two officers of the Russian Federal Security Service and two hackers the Russian government employed – in connection with the 2014 Yahoo security breach.
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USA authorities and cyber security specialists have been saying for years that the Kremlin employs criminal hackers, allowing the Russian government to advance its agenda while denying involvement.
“It is very important for corporations around the country to know, when you are going against the resources and backing of a nation state, it is not a fair fight, and it is not a fight you are likely to win alone”, McCord said.
Two of the defendants named are Russian FSB officers, and the other two are criminal hackers. Baratov, the second hacker, who lives in Hamilton, a city near Toronto, was apparently the phishing expert – crafting emails that lured victims into giving up sensitive information. Dokuchaev and Sushchin were said to be Russian intelligence agents who allegedly masterminded and directed the hacking, the justice department said. The U.S. Justice Department would not confirm that account. He was an associate of FSB officer Dmitry Dokuchaev, 33. The Russians purportedly also spied on military officers, bank executives and a couple of cloud computing companies in the US along with an airline and a gambling regulator in Nevada.
Officials say Belan – who was already on the FBI’s “most wanted” cyber list and is now in Russian Federation -gained access to more than 30 million Yahoo accounts and stole their contacts to send marketing spam.
“The involvement and direction of FSB officers with law enforcement responsibilities makes this conduct that much more egregious”, McCord said.
They used that information to break into the accounts of Russian and United States officials, Russian journalists and politicians, and business officials from multiple countries. His superior, Sergei Mikhailov, deputy chief of the FSB’s Center for Information Security, was also arrested in December and charged with treason. The other three individuals are now in Russian Federation, according to Bloomberg’s source.
Russian Federation has always been known for its dynamic cybercriminal underworld, which is fueled by high technical standards and the opportunity for significant financial rewards.
The charges could change that calculation on the part of the hackers, and the intelligence services.
The Russian government had no official comment on the charges in the Yahoo case.
“More needs to be done”, said Edward McAndrew, a former federal cybercrime prosecutor who now works at law firm Ballard Spahr. He is being held in custody, and Virk said he could not say where, or by whom.
Rivalries between these groups mean they are constantly vying for the Kremlin’s favor. They say the arrangement offers deniability to Moscow and freedom from legal troubles for the hackers.
Many worry that Moscow is also behind WikiLeaks’ publication of a trove of documents on the Central Intelligence Agency’s own hacking program last week, which exposed secrets and embarrassed the United States spy agency.
“The Toronto Fugitive Squad was contacted by a number of agencies looking for their help with this very large global investigation”.
“It obviously comes at a very intense time in our relationship with Russian Federation and its cyber activities”, he said.
“I had heard multiple times before this that he was a hacker”, the friend said, recalling that Baratov would only ever say he ran an online website. “But you do not have to go it alone”. Artimovich shared screenshots of some of these proposals with The Associated Press, which were made via social networking sites. He was paid $100 for each successfully hacked account, the indictment says. The intrusion, along with a second, earlier hack that exposed even more accounts, has complicated Yahoo’s planned acquisition by Verizon Communications.
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The compromised accounts may have affected more than just email. “He is clearly not a programmer”, Gostev said.
