U.S. Charges Four People for Yahoo Hacking Including Two Russians

The U.S. charged four people, including two Russian intelligence officers, over the theft of hundreds of millions of accounts of Yahoo users from a computer breach that threatened to derail its acquisition by Verizon, according to Bloomberg. The Department of Justice accused the four of theft, conspiracy, economic espionage, wire fraud and theft of trade secrets connected to one of the largest data breaches in history.

The security breach, which happened years earlier, was revealed almost five months after Verizon’s initial offer in July to acquire Yahoo’s key internet assets including its finance, sports and other websites. Verizon then insisted on a better deal and ultimately, trimmed its offer price by $350 million to $4.48 billion. Yahoo has been afflicted by two major breaches in recent years.

The indictments, filed in San Francisco federal court, point to actions deep inside Russia’s intelligence machine that could give Moscow access to compromising information on users of one of the world’s biggest email platforms. Among those charged were Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin, who prosecutors say worked for the Russian Federal Security Service unit that conducts cyber investigations.

Yahoo said in December that cyber-thieves in 2013 siphoned information including users’ email addresses, scrambled account passwords and dates of birth. The stolen data could allow criminals to go after more sensitive personal information elsewhere online. Earlier in September, Yahoo disclosed another breach dating back to 2014 that had affected about 500 million customer accounts.