Russian Federation denies Yahoo hack involvement

The U.S. on Wednesday indicted two Russian intelligence officers and two cyber hackers who are allegedly behind a massive data breach that targeted Yahoo’s email servers.

The Department of Justice says the four people worked together without authorization to get into Yahoo’s systems to steal information and obtain access to email accounts from Yahoo, Google and other providers.

“.computer hacking, economic espionage and other criminal offenses in connection with a conspiracy, beginning in January 2014, to access Yahoo’s network and the contents of webmail accounts”.

She identified Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin as the FSB agents under indictment.

The unit within the FSB where the two defendants work, known as Center 18, is the main “point of contact in Moscow for cyber-crime matters”, according to McCord.

The Russian officers involved in the conspiracy were identified as Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin, who are now in Russia.

According to Russian news agency Interfax, Dokuchaev was arrested for treason in December. Together with Belan, all three are now at the top of FBI’s most-wanted cyber criminals list.

Baratov, who holds Canadian citizenship, was arrested on Tuesday (14 March) by Canadian authorities. There is no extradition treaty between Russian Federation and the USA, so U.S. authorities will only be able to get them in custody if they travel overseas to a country that is willing to hand them over. Over the last 25 years in Washington as a reporter, editor and correspondent, he has covered an increasingly wide array of high-tech issues for publications like Communications Week, Internet Week, Fiber Optics News, tele.com magazine and Wireless Week.

“The indictment unequivocally shows the attacks on Yahoo were state-sponsored”, said Chris Madsen, assistant general counsel at Yahoo, in a statement.

U.S. intelligence agencies have said those were carried out by Russian Federation in order to help the campaign of Republican President Donald Trump.

Yahoo reported its first hack in September, in which it blamed a “state actor” for the theft of a half-billion accounts, which at the time was considered the largest single breach of data to date.

The announced indictments are unrelated to separate charges of Russian interference with the Democratic National Committee and 2016 presidential election, which are still under investigation.