The U.S. Department of Justice has charged four defendants – including two officers of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) – for computer hacking and economic espionage for hacking into Yahoo’s network and email accounts in 2014.
According to a press release issued by the DOJ Wednesday, the defendants include Russian nationals Dmitry Aleksandrovich Dokuchaev, 33, Igor Anatolyevich Sushchin, 43, and Alexsey Alexseyevich “Magg” Belan, 29, as well as Karim Baratov, 22, a Canadian and Kazakh national and resident of Canada. Dokuchaev and Suschin were identified as Russian FSB officers.
A grand jury in the Northern District of California indicted the foursome on charges they illegally infiltrated Yahoo’s systems to steal information related to at least 500 million accounts and gain access to Yahoo, Google, and other webmail accounts. Targeted accounts included those of some Russian journalists, U.S. and Russian government officials, and employees of private sector companies in the financial and transportation industries, among others. One unspecified defendant also used the hack for personal gain by stealing credit card and gift card numbers, redirecting some Yahoo search engine traffic for commissions, and opening up contact information for at least 30 million Yahoo accounts to a spam campaign.
Access to Yahoo’s networks first began as early as 2014 and was sustained through September 2016, when Yahoo discovered the breach.
“The criminal conduct at issue, carried out and otherwise facilitated by officers from an FSB unit that serves as the FBI’s point of contact in Moscow on cybercrime matters, is beyond the pale,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord commented. “Once again, the Department and the FBI have demonstrated that hackers around the world can and will be exposed and held accountable. State actors may be using common criminals to access the data they want, but the indictment shows that our companies do not have to stand alone against this threat. We commend Yahoo and Google for their sustained and invaluable cooperation in the investigation aimed at obtaining justice for, and protecting the privacy of their users.”
The FBI, led by the San Francisco Field Office, conducted the investigation that resulted in the charges. The case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, with support from the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs.
Further details around the case – including a full list of charges – can be found here.
The news comes just around a month after Verizon and Yahoo hammered out a new deal for the former’s acquisition of the latter.
With the new agreement, Verizon secured a $350 million discount on its original purchase price, bringing the new acquisition cost down to $4.48 billion. As part of the arrangement, the carrier also held Yahoo on the hook to pay half of any cash liabilities that come as a part of non-Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) government investigations or third-party lawsuits stemming from the breach. Liabilities from shareholder lawsuits and SEC investigations will continue to be the responsibility of Yahoo.