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U.S. NEWS Wednesday 30 May 2018
Hacker gets 5 years for Russian-linked

Yahoo security breach

By PAUL ELIAS Russian government offi-
Associated Press cials and employees of fi-
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A nancial services and other
young computer hacker private businesses.
who prosecutors say unwit- Baratov and his attorneys
tingly worked with a Rus- also said his work with the
sian spy agency was sen- Russia spy agency was un-
tenced to five years in pris- witting.
on Tuesday for using data In court documents Bara-
stolen in a massive Yahoo tov claimed he could ac-
data breach to gain ac- cess webmail accounts
cess to private emails. maintained by Google
U.S. Judge Vince Chhabria and Russian providers such
also fined Karim Baratov as Mail.Ru and Yandex.
$250,000 during a sentenc- He would provide custom-
ing hearing in San Francis- ers with a screenshot of
co. the hacked account and In this April 11, 2017 file photo, Akhmet Tokbergenov, left, and
Baratov was named in promised he could change Dinara Tokbergenova, parents of alleged Yahoo hacker Karim
a federal indictment last security questions so they Baratov, leave the court after their son was denied bail, with
year that charged two Rus- could maintain control of lawyer Deepak Paradkar, right, in Hamilton, Ont.
Associated Press
sian spies with orchestrat- the account.
ing the 2014 Yahoo breach The U.S. Justice Depart- collected more than $1.1 is likely Baratov will be de-
involving 500 million us- ment charged two Russian million in fees, which he ported once he is released
ers. Baratov was charged spies with orchestrating the used to buy a house and from prison.
with using that stolen data 2014 security breach at Ya- expensive cars. “Criminal hackers and
passed to him by Russia’s hoo to steal data from 500 Baratov, who has been in the countries that spon-
Federal Security Service to million users. Dmitry Alek- custody since his arrest, sor them make a grave
hack dozens of email ac- sandrovich Dokuchaev told the judge that his time mistake when they target
counts of journalists, busi- and Igor Anatolyevich re- behind bars has been “a American companies and
ness leaders and others. main at large and prosecu- very humbling and eye- citizens,” said Assistant At-
Prosecutors said Baratov, tors believe they are living opening experience.” torney General for National
23, was an “international in Russia, which doesn’t He apologized and prom- Security John Demers. “We
hacker for hire” who did have an extradition treaty ised “to be a better man” will identify them wherever
little or no research of his with the United States. and obey the law upon his they are and bring them to
customers. Baratov is believed to have release. The judge said it justice.”q
He pleaded guilty in No-
vember to nine felony
hacking charges. He ac-
knowledged that he be-
gan hacking as a teen sev-
en years ago and charged
customers $100 a hack to
access web-based emails.
Baratov, who was born
in Kazakhstan but lived in
Toronto, Canada, where
he was arrested last year,
charged customers to ob-
tain another person’s web-
mail passwords by tricking
them to enter their creden-
tials into a fake password
reset page.
Prosecutors said in court
papers that Baratov’s Rus-
sian-language web site
named “webhacker” ad-
vertised services for “hack-
ing of email accounts with-
out prepayment.”
Prosecutors said Russian se-
curity service paid Baratov
to target dozens of email
accounts using information
obtained from the Yahoo
hack. Prosecutors argued
that Russia’s Federal Secu-
rity Service targeted Rus-
sian journalists, U.S. and