Although at the beginning of the year he pleaded not guilty, the young hacker has admitted nine charges this November 28, one for conspiracy to commit computer fraud and abuse and eight for aggravated identity theft. The Kazakh citizen could face up to 20 years in prison, although according to his lawyers the recommended penalty is eight to nine years. The sentence will be issued on February 20. After being arrested last March in Ontario, Canada, at the request of the United States, he resigned his right as a Canadian citizen to an extradition hearing. Yahoo alleges that the attack was financed by the Kremlin. So far, the only people against whom formal charges have been filed for the massive cyber attack are Baratov and three other men. Among these guys, two are officers of the Federal Security Service of Russia (FSB), so their extradition to the United States is unlikely: Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin. One of the theories is that these two Russian agents coordinated with Alexsey Belan, one of the most wanted hackers by the FBI, to carry out the attack. According to US prosecutors, Dokuchaev and Sushchin used the information stolen from Yahoo to spy on Russian journalists, officials of the United States and the Russian government, as well as financial services employees and other private companies. The summary issued by the United States Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of California details the scope of the charges:- “Baratov’s role in the accused conspiracy was to hack the email accounts of individuals of interest to the FSB and send the passwords of those accounts to Dokuchaev in exchange for money. As alleged in the indictment, Dokuchaev, Sushchin and Belan threatened the Yahoo network and gained the ability to access Yahoo accounts. When they wanted to access individual webmail accounts through other Internet service providers, such as Google and Yandex (based in Russia), Dokuchaev instructed Baratov to endanger those accounts”. So, what do you think about this? SImply share your views and thoughts in the comment section below.
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