“The criminal conduct at issue, carried out and otherwise facilitated by officers from an FSB unit that serves as the FBI’s point of contact in Moscow on cyber crime matters, is beyond the pale,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord said at a press conference announcing the charges.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) is the successor to the KGB.
Yahoo said when it announced the then-unprecedented breach last September that it believed the attack was state-sponsored, and on Wednesday the company said the indictment “unequivocally shows” that to be the case.
The charges announced Wednesday are not related to the hacking of Democratic Party emails during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. U.S. intelligence agencies have said they were carried out by Russian spy services, including the FSB, to help the campaign of Republican candidate Donald Trump.
The indictment named the FSB officers involved as Dmitry Dokuchaev and his superior, Igor Sushchin, who are both in Russia.
Dokuchaev was arrested for treason in December, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.
Originally posted 2017-03-15 22:58:53.
