Russian Agents Were Behind Yahoo Hack, U.S. Says

In a development that can only heighten the distrust between American and Russian authorities on cybersecurity, the Justice Department on Wednesday charged two Russian intelligence officers with directing a sweeping criminal conspiracy that broke into 500 million Yahoo accounts in 2014.

The Russian government then used the information it obtained from the intelligence officers and two others named in the indictment — a Russian hacker and a Kazakh national living in Canada — to focus on foreign officials, business executives and journalists, federal prosecutors said. The targets included numerous financial executives, executives at an American cloud computing company, an airline official and even a casino regulator in Nevada.

Details of the wide-ranging attack come as the United States government is investigating other Russian cyberattacks against American targets, including the theft of emails last year from the Democratic National Committee and attempts to break in to state election systems. Investigators are also examining communications between associates of President Trump and Russian officials that occurred during the presidential campaign.

That American and Russian authorities are often at loggerheads in their approaches to criminal breaches was made clear in the indictment. The two Russian agents were supposed to be helping Americans hunt for hackers but were instead working against them.

And one of the outside hackers, a Russian named Alexsey Belan, had been indicted twice before for three intrusions into American e-commerce companies and had been arrested in Europe, but escaped to Russia before he could be extradited. Prosecutors said they received no response to their requests to the Russian government to turn over Mr. Belan to the American authorities. - Read More, nytimes

Russian Agents Behind Yahoo Breach, U.S. Says