U.S. charges Canadian hacker
Allegedly broke into Yahoo network in 2014
POSTMEDIA NETWORK
Russian government agents paid a 22-year-old Canadian and an alleged accomplice to hack U.S. Internet companies in one of the largest data breaches in history, U.S. authorities alleged Wednesday.
Karim Baratov, a Canadian and Kazakh national, was arrested by the Toronto police fugitive squad Tuesday morning in Ancaster, Ont., in connection with a hack of 500 million Yahoo and Gmail accounts.
He was handed over to the RCMP to be processed for extradition to the United States, which asked Canada to arrest him on March 7. The RCMP confirmed it had assisted with the FBI investigation.
Two officers of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), which replaced the Soviet KGB, have also been indicted with economic espionage for directing the massive hacking operation, which began in January 2014.
“The involvement and direction of FSB officers with law enforcement responsibilities makes this conduct that much more egregious,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Mary McCoord said in announcing the charges.
According to a summary of the allegations, the operation was run by Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin, members of an FSB unit called the Center for Information Security, or Center 18. They worked with Baratov and a Russian hacker named Alexsey Belan.
Wanted since 2012, Belan had been arrested in Europe but escaped to Russia before he was extradited. Instead of taking Belan into custody on an outstanding Interpol Red Notice, the FSB officers instead put him to work.
In late 2014 he stole “at least a portion” of Yahoo’s User Database containing subscriber information for more than 500 million accounts. He also “obtained unauthorized access” to Yahoo’s Account Management Tool, used to log changes to user accounts.
They were then able to “locate Yahoo email accounts of interest and to mint cookies for those accounts, enabling the co-conspirators to access at least 6,500 such accounts without authorization.”
The accounts targeted by the FSB belonged to both government and industry: A foreign intelligence and law enforcement service; Russian journalists; Russian and U.S. officials; a Russian investment bank; a French transportation company; and a U.S. airline.
“During the conspiracy, FSB officers facilitated Belan’s other criminal activities, by providing him with sensitive FSB law enforcement and intelligence information that would have helped him avoid detection by U.S. and other law enforcement agencies outside Russia, including information regarding FSB investigations of computer hacking and FSB techniques for identifying criminal hackers,” the summary said.
Upon learning that a “target of interest” held e-mail accounts provided by web companies other than Yahoo, the FSB tasked the Canadian, Baratov, “with obtaining unauthorized access to more than 80 accounts in exchange for commissions,” according to the allegations.
Baratov, who is also known as Kay, Karim Taloverov and Karim Akehmet Tokbergenov, specifically went after the accounts of an International Monetary Fund official, as well as several Russian officials. He was paid a “bounty” when he was successful, it said.
A Facebook page under the name Karim Baratov shows a young man from Ancaster who resembled Baratov posing with luxury cars with vanity plates. It links to the website of a company called Elite Space. The U.S. indictment says Baratov held a Pay Pal account in the name Elite Space Corporation.
A post on the page described being suspended from school four years ago for “threatening to kill my ex-friend as a joke.” But it said being out of school gave him time to work on his “online projects 24/7, and really move my business to the next level.”
He paid off his mortgage and bought a BMW 7, the post said. “By the time my suspension was done, I changed my whole life plan!” He said he then told his principal to “f---- off ” and was expelled.
“Everything happens for a reason, and this really changed my life to better! My advise (Sic) to you is give yourself permission to get the most out of your life. Taking shortcuts doesn’t mean shortcutting the end result.”
In addition to seeking his arrest, the FBI has asked the courts for seizure orders for Baratov’s Aston Martin and Mercedes, as well as the Pay Pal account.