Two Russian secret agents and two paid hackers have been charged by a grand jury in California for hacking Yahoo email accounts In one of the biggest ever data breaches, 500 million Yahoo accounts were attacked in 2014. Announcing the charges, Assistant Attorney General Mary B. McCord noted that Russian journalists, diplomats and politicians were amongst the accounts that got hacked.
Secret agents
The defendants are Dmitry Aleksandrovich Dokuchaev, 33, a Russian national and resident; Igor Anatolyevich Sushchin, 43, a Russian national and resident; Alexsey Alexseyevich Belan, aka “Magg,” 29, a Russian national and resident; and Karim Baratov, aka “Kay,” “Karim Taloverov” and “Karim Akehmet Tokbergenov,” 22, a Canadian and Kazakh national and a resident of Canada. The first two are intelligence agents working to prevent international cyber crime with their counterparts in the countries, including the US. Now it’s alleged that they paid the two hackers to make the massive data breach. Belan was already on the FBI’s Most Wanted list and had twice been arrested in connection with computer fraud.