Suspect in Yahoo hack says he is innocent in US lawsuit

One of the suspects in the Yahoo hack, a 22-year-old Russian named Baratov, has pleaded not guilty in a US court. The indictment concerns a total of 47 offenses in the field of, among other things, computer crime and identity theft.

According to The Register, the suspect was extradited from Canada and has not contested this. Court documents show that the man, along with another 29-year-old suspect, would have performed work for two Russian FSB agents. That consisted of the hacking of Yahoo’s servers in October of 2014. In March of this year, it was revealed that the US had charged all four individuals for the hack that affected 500 million users. This hack is separate from the August 2013 hack, which allowed attackers to obtain data from more than a billion accounts.

By accessing the Yahoo servers, they were able to steal information from Russian and American government officials, including military personnel, according to the American justice system. The FSB also gained access to accounts of employees of financial services through this access, the American justice claims. In addition, the 29-year-old hacker has used access to the accounts to earn money. For example, he searched the emails for credit card details and used thirty million accounts for scamming.

The Register writes that Baratov is likely the only one of the four to stand trial. His co-defendant lives in Russia and has a $100,000 reward to his name, which was issued by the FBI. One of the FSB agents still works for the security service and travels alone to countries that do not extradite to the US, while the second has been charged by Russia for treason.