U.S. Charges Russian Intelligence Officers Over Yahoo Hack

The Justice Department is charging Russia's intelligence service with helping compromise half a billion Yahoo email accounts in an attempt to steal secrets from dissidents, journalists and others.

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The U.S. government is now blaming Russia for another major cyberattack inside the United States. This time, according to the Justice Department, Russia was behind a massive hack of Yahoo accounts that affected a half billion people back in 2014. NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre has the story.

GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB, has a unit known as Center 18. It's supposed to prevent cyber-crimes. And it's the Russian point of contact for the FBI when it wants to discuss such matters with Moscow. But the Justice Department says two Russian officials with Center 18 worked with two private hackers to break into at least 500 million Yahoo accounts in the U.S. and abroad.

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MARY MCCORD: The involvement and direction of FSB officers with law enforcement responsibilities makes this conduct that much more egregious.

MYRE: That's Mary McCord, acting assistant attorney general, who announced the indictments of the two Russian officials and the two hackers at the Justice Department today. This comes as the FBI and Congress are still investigating the Russian hacking into Democratic Party emails during last year's presidential election. McCord stressed that the Yahoo case is separate from the election meddling case. And she repeatedly declined to make any links between them.

However, she did say the Russians were going after Yahoo accounts that belonged to U.S. government officials, diplomats and members of the military. These may have been the main targets, but McCord says that hacker Alexsey Belan was allowed to plunder the accounts for his own gain.

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MCCORD: Belan used his access to Yahoo to search for and steal financial information such as gift card and credit card numbers from users' email accounts.

MYRE: Belan and the two security officials are in Russia, which doesn't have an extradition treaty with the U.S. But the other hacker, Karim Baratov, was arrested yesterday in Canada. And the U.S. will seek his extradition. The U.S. has filed cyber cases against other countries in recent years, including China and Iran. The FBI's Paul Abbate said that more are likely.

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PAUL ABBATE: If you illegally target U.S. citizens or American companies, you will be identified, pursued and held to account wherever you are.

MYRE: For Yahoo, This is the latest blow and what's been an extremely rough ride in recent years. This email breach is in addition to an even larger hack back in 2013. The Justice Department praised Yahoo for its cooperation, though the company has been criticized in the media and punished in the markets for its handling of the hacks and its many business challenges.

Yahoo initially sold its core internet business to Verizon. And the price was then renegotiated and slashed by more than $300 million after the hacking came to light last year. Greg Myre, NPR News, Washington.

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