WASHINGTON: Wednesday’s indictments in the US of four people in a 2014 cyberattack on Yahoo Inc. provides the clearest details yet on what some officials say is a symbiotic relationship between Moscow’s security services and private Russian hackers.
The indictment charges two officers of the FSB, Russia’s Federal Security Service, and two hackers who allegedly worked hand-in-hand with them to crack 500 million Yahoo user accounts.
US authorities and cybersecurity specialists have long said the Kremlin employs criminal hackers for its geostrategic purposes. They say the arrangement offers deniability to Moscow and freedom from legal troubles for the hackers.
A US intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said employing criminal hackers helps “complement Kremlin intentions and provide plausible deniability for the Russian state.”
The FSB in Moscow did not respond immediately to a request for comment on Wednesday evening.
The United States sometimes engages with criminal hackers as well, buying tools from them or recruiting them to help find other criminal hackers, cybersecurity professionals and government officials say.
Milan Patel, a former FBI cyber agent and now managing director for cyber defense at K2 Intelligence, said the intermingling of espionage and cybercrime in Russia had led the United States and its allies to be far more wary about alerting Moscow to criminal hackers.
“Magically those guys would disappear off the battlefield and most likely end up working for the Russian government,” Patel said of the names shared by Washington.
The Russian government had no official comment on the charges in the Yahoo case.
Russian news accounts stressed that one of the FSB agents, Dmitry Dokuchaev, was arrested by Russian authorities in December and charged with treason.
The indictment charges Dokuchaev with having acted as a handler for a hacker named Karim Baratov, directing him to use the Yahoo data to crack e-mails on other systems and paying him a bounty when he succeeded.
Baratov is in custody in Canada, according to the Toronto police, while Dokuchaev remains in Russia.
The charges coincide with mounting tensions between US intelligence agencies and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government, which they accused of hacking the 2016 US presidential election to influence the vote in favor of then-Republican candidate Donald Trump.
In addition, congressional committees are investigating possible links between Russian figures and associates of President Trump.
Senator John Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement the indictments showed “the close and mutually beneficial ties between the cyber underworld and Russia’s government and security services.”
He said the case “underscores the complexity and the urgency” of the committee’s investigation of Russian interference in the US election.
James Lewis, a former State Department official and now a cyber expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said there were three rules for cooperation between the Russian government and criminal hackers.
Private hackers know to avoid attacking Russian-language sites and to share their profits with authorities, he said. “Rule Number Three (is), if we ask you to do us a favor, do it.”
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Yahoo cyber indictment shows Kremlin, hackers working hand-in-hand
Yahoo cyber indictment shows Kremlin, hackers working hand-in-hand
Russia strikes power plant, kills four in Ukraine barrage
KHARKIV: Russia battered Ukraine with more than two dozen missiles and hundreds of drones early Tuesday, killing four people and pummelling another power plant, piling more pressure on Ukraine’s brittle energy system.
An AFP journalist in the eastern Kharkiv region, where four people were killed, saw firefighters battling a fire at a postal hub and rescue workers helping survivors by lamp light in freezing temperatures.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said “several hundred thousand” households near Kyiv were without power after the strikes, and again called on allies to bolster his country’s air defense systems.
“The world can respond to this Russian terror with new assistance packages for Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media.
“Russia must come to learn that cold will not help it win the war,” he added.
Authorities in Kyiv and the surrounding region rolled out emergency power cuts in the hours after the attack, saying freezing temperatures were complicating their work.
DTEK, Ukraine’s largest energy provider, said Russian forces had struck one of its power plants, saying it was the eighth such attack since October.
The operator did not reveal which of its plants was struck, but said Russia had attacked its power plants over 220 times since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Daily attacks
Moscow has pummelled Ukraine with daily drone and missile barrages in recent months, targeting energy infrastructure and cutting power and heating in the frigid height of winter.
The Ukrainian air force said that Tuesday’s bombardment included 25 missiles and 247 drones.
The Kharkiv governor gave the death toll and added that six people were wounded in the overnight hit outside the region’s main city, also called Kharkiv.
White helmeted emergency workers could be seen clambering through the still-smoking wreckage of a building occupied by postal company Nova Poshta, in a video posted by the regional prosecutor’s office.
Within Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov said a Russian long-range drone struck a medical facility for children, causing a fire. No casualties were reported.
The overnight strikes hit other regions as well, including southern city Odesa.
Residential buildings, a hospital and a kindergarten were damaged, with at least five people wounded in two waves of attacks, regional governor Sergiy Lysak said.
Russia’s use last week of a nuclear-capable Oreshnik ballistic missile on Ukraine sparked condemnation from Kyiv’s allies, including Washington, which called it a “dangerous and inexplicable escalation of this war.”
Moscow on Monday said the missile hit an aviation repair factory in the Lviv region and that it was fired in response to Ukraine’s attempt to strike one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residences — a claim Kyiv denies and that Washington has said it does not believe happened.
An AFP journalist in the eastern Kharkiv region, where four people were killed, saw firefighters battling a fire at a postal hub and rescue workers helping survivors by lamp light in freezing temperatures.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said “several hundred thousand” households near Kyiv were without power after the strikes, and again called on allies to bolster his country’s air defense systems.
“The world can respond to this Russian terror with new assistance packages for Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media.
“Russia must come to learn that cold will not help it win the war,” he added.
Authorities in Kyiv and the surrounding region rolled out emergency power cuts in the hours after the attack, saying freezing temperatures were complicating their work.
DTEK, Ukraine’s largest energy provider, said Russian forces had struck one of its power plants, saying it was the eighth such attack since October.
The operator did not reveal which of its plants was struck, but said Russia had attacked its power plants over 220 times since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Daily attacks
Moscow has pummelled Ukraine with daily drone and missile barrages in recent months, targeting energy infrastructure and cutting power and heating in the frigid height of winter.
The Ukrainian air force said that Tuesday’s bombardment included 25 missiles and 247 drones.
The Kharkiv governor gave the death toll and added that six people were wounded in the overnight hit outside the region’s main city, also called Kharkiv.
White helmeted emergency workers could be seen clambering through the still-smoking wreckage of a building occupied by postal company Nova Poshta, in a video posted by the regional prosecutor’s office.
Within Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov said a Russian long-range drone struck a medical facility for children, causing a fire. No casualties were reported.
The overnight strikes hit other regions as well, including southern city Odesa.
Residential buildings, a hospital and a kindergarten were damaged, with at least five people wounded in two waves of attacks, regional governor Sergiy Lysak said.
Russia’s use last week of a nuclear-capable Oreshnik ballistic missile on Ukraine sparked condemnation from Kyiv’s allies, including Washington, which called it a “dangerous and inexplicable escalation of this war.”
Moscow on Monday said the missile hit an aviation repair factory in the Lviv region and that it was fired in response to Ukraine’s attempt to strike one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residences — a claim Kyiv denies and that Washington has said it does not believe happened.
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