Hacker jailed five years over Yahoo breach

SAN FRANCISCO: A young computer hacker who prosecutors say unwittingly worked with a Russian spy agency was sentenced to five years in prison for using data stolen in a massive Yahoo data breach to gain access to private emails.

US Judge Vince Chhabria also fined Karim Baratov US$250,000 (RM1mil) during a sentencing hearing in San Francisco.

Baratov was named in a federal indictment last year that charged two Russian spies with orchestrating the 2014 Yahoo breach involving 500 million users.

Baratov was charged with using stolen data passed to him by Russia’s Federal Security Service to hack dozens of email accounts of journalists, business leaders and others.

Prosecutors said Baratov, 23, was an “international hacker for hire” who did little or no research of his customers.

He pleaded guilty in November to nine felony hacking charges. He acknowledged that he began hacking as a teen seven years ago and charged customers US$100 (RM400) a hack to access web-based emails.

Baratov, who was born in Kazakhstan but lived in Toronto, Canada, where he was arrested last year, charged customers to obtain email passwords by tricking them to enter their credentials into a fake password reset page.

Prosecutors said in court papers that Baratov’s Russian-language website named “webhacker” advertised services for “hacking of email accounts without prepayment”.

Prosecutors said that Russian security services paid Baratov to target dozens of email accounts using information obtained from the Yahoo hack.

Prosecutors argued that Russia’s Federal Security Service targeted Russian journalists, US and Russian government officials and employees of financial services and other private businesses.

Baratov and his attorneys also said his work with the Russia spy agency was unwitting.

Baratov claimed he could access webmail accounts maintained by Google and Russian providers such as Mail.Ru and Yandex.

He would provide customers with a screenshot of the hacked account and promised he could change security questions so they could maintain control of the account. — AP