Russian Agents, Hackers Charged In Massive Yahoo Breach: Security Experts Weigh In The Indictment

Russian Agents, Hackers Charged In Massive Yahoo Breach: Security Experts Weigh In The Indictment

Caezar Sotto

The United States of America has recently indicted four individuals for cyber-related crimes. The alleged perpetrators are two Russian government agents and two third-party hackers.

Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin, both work for Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), while Alexsey Belan and Karim Baratov are on the list of the FBI's most wanted cyber criminals. The indictment comes after their alleged participation in the massive Yahoo data breach.

In a post by PCMag, security experts said that the indictment might amount to nothing. They have stressed that it's expected that the Kremlin will not honor the U.S. indictment. However, the decision will publicly shame Russia's name.

According to Wednesday's indictment, The Russian agents (Dokuchaev and Sushchin) allegedly recruited a pair of third-party hackers (Belan and Baratov) to breach Yahoo. They were able to successfully steal information on 500 million user accounts.

Security Experts Weigh In The Indictment

Security expert Jeremiah Grossman said that Russia won't likely hand over the perpetrators. Grossman is the chief of security strategy at SentinelOne. Comodo security researcher Kenneth Geers also added that hackers are "still immune from prosecution."

The indictment is more about sending a symbolic message to Russia, said, Mark Kuhr. He added stated that Russia won't likely be affected of the indictment. Kuhr is the CTO at security firm Synack and is also a former U.S. National Security Agency network analyst.

The indictment also shows that U.S. investigators can successfully track cyber espionage operations. FBI special agent John Bennet warned perpetrators that they can track them down. He said at a press conference on Wednesday that they "will hunt won hackers" in the corners of the dark web.

However, some experts believe that more needs to be done to dissuade future attacks. Edward McAndrew, a former U.S. federal cyber-crime prosecutor said that they "must act beyond the indictment stage."

The breach exposes FSB agents hacking and gathering information on secured personal data. The fourth suspect named Karim Baratov has already been apprehended in Canada.

© Copyright 2020 Mobile & Apps, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Back
Real Time Analytics