Back in 2014, a group of hackers were responsible for the now infamous Yahoo hack. It ended up compromising around five hundred million Yahoo accounts. The hack was done via a spear phishing operation.
Information on the hacker responsible for the Yahoo Hack
The hacker is a Canadian who goes under the name of Karim Baratov. He appeared in front of a San Francisco federal court on Tuesday afternoon. He also admitted that his role was to “hack webmail accounts of individuals of interest to the FSB,” the Russian internal security service. Baratov then sent those passwords to his alleged co-conspirator, Dmitry Aleksandrovich Dokuchaev.
Karim was accused of the act back in February of this year. He was arrested in the following month in Ontario. Another three people were indicted with him but they are in Russia. There are unlikely to be extradited to the US.
United States Attorney Brian Stretch had the following to say.
“THE ILLEGAL HACKING OF PRIVATE COMMUNICATIONS IS A GLOBAL PROBLEM THAT TRANSCENDS POLITICAL BOUNDARIES. CYBERCRIME IS NOT ONLY A GRAVE THREAT TO PERSONAL PRIVACY AND SECURITY, BUT CAUSES GREAT FINANCIAL HARM TO INDIVIDUALS WHO ARE HACKED AND COSTS THE WORLD ECONOMY HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS EVERY YEAR.”
The attack allowed four individuals to gain access to the inside of the Yahoo network. After this access was gained, Alexsey Belan (already wanted in the US) is said to have probed the network for information. He found two assets; one was the Yahoo User Database (UDB) which allows the hackers to trace the location of a target. The second was an administrative tool called Account Management Tool.
Karim’s sentencing hearing has been set for the twentieth of February. This is of the coming year at 3:00 pm in federal court in San Francisco.
Source: https://techviral.uk/security/hacking/hacker-pleads-guilty-yahoo-hack/