Justice Department says Russian spies, conspirators hacked Yahoo in 2014

LOS ANGELES - The U.S. Department of Justice said Wednesday that four foreign nationals - including two officers of the Russian Federal Security Service - were indicted on a charge of computer hacking, economic espionage and other criminal offenses in connection with a massive attack and theft of data from Yahoo's network.

A grand jury in the Northern District of California indicted four defendants, the DOJ said: 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.

Yahoo's disclosure of two massive user-data breaches that occurred in 2013 and 2014 threatened to derail Verizon's acquisition of the internet company's web businesses. Verizon and Yahoo subsequently agreed to shave $350 million from the purchase price for Yahoo's internet businesses, to about $4.48 billion, because of the hacks; Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam had originally sought to reduce the deal price by $925 million, according to a Yahoo SEC filing this week.

The four individuals lost their access to Yahoo's networks in September 2016, but they continued to used data stolen from the company through at least December 2016, the DOJ said.

'The indictment unequivocally shows the attacks on Yahoo were state-sponsored,” Chris Madsen, Yahoo's assistant general counsel and head of global law enforcement, said in a statement. 'We are deeply grateful to the FBI for investigating these crimes and the DOJ for bringing charges against those responsible.”

According to the DOJ, the four defendants were behind the 2014 attack. Beginning in January 2014, the feds charged, the individuals used unauthorized access to Yahoo's systems to steal information from about at least 500 million Yahoo accounts and then used some of that stolen information to obtain unauthorized access to the contents of accounts at Yahoo, Google and other webmail providers, including accounts of Russian journalists, U.S. and Russian government officials, and private-sector employees of financial, transportation and other companies.

In addition, one of the defendants - Alexsey Belan - also exploited his access to Yahoo's network 'for his personal financial gain,” the DOJ said, by searching Yahoo user communications for credit-card and gift-card account numbers. According to authorities, Belan also redirected a subset of Yahoo search-engine traffic to earn commissions, and gained access to more than 30 million accounts whose contacts were then stolen to facilitate a spam campaign.

'Cybercrime poses a significant threat to our nation's security and prosperity, and this is one of the largest data breaches in history,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. 'But thanks to the tireless efforts of U.S. prosecutors and investigators, as well as our Canadian partners, today we have identified four individuals, including two Russian FSB officers, responsible for unauthorized access to millions of users' accounts. The United States will vigorously investigate and prosecute the people behind such attacks to the fullest extent of the law.”