Breakthrough in Yahoo data hack, Russia denies any involvement

WASHINGTON: The US Justice Department has announced charges against four suspects in the massive 2014 Yahoo data breach, including two Russian security service officers.

The defendants used unauthorised access to Yahoo’s systems to steal information from at least 500 million Yahoo accounts and then used some of that to obtain unauthorised access to the contents of accounts at Yahoo, Google and other web-mail providers, it said.

Two of the defendants, Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin, worked for the Russian Federal Security Service, known as the FSB.

The other two suspects are Alexsey Alexseyevich Belan, a Russian national, and Karim Baratov, a Canadian and Kazakh national.

However, the Kremlin denied the involvement of official Russian agencies, including the FSB.

“There can be no talk of any official involvement of any Russian agency in any unlawful cyberspace actions,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmtiry Peskov.

“We continue to pierce the veil of cyber crimes,” said FBI director James Comey. “We are shrinking the world to ensure that cyber criminals think twice before targeting US persons and interests.”

Meanwhile, a highly-placed Russian source said yesterday that Washington had never approached Moscow to address the accusations and the probe against Russian nationals allegedly involved in hacker attacks on Yahoo accounts.

“This fact, as well as the absence of concrete details of the case, lead to us believe that another spiral of ‘Russian hacker paranoia’ is being used as an instrument of political struggle in the United States,” the source said.