Details on the Russians charged in the Yahoo data breach
Four people charged by U.S. officials for a Yahoo data breach include two Russian intelligence officers and two hackers they enlisted. Some details on the men, according to an indictment, documents made public by the Justice Department and AP reporting:
— Karim Baratov, also known as "Kay," ''Karim Taloverov" and "Karim Akehmet Tokbergenov," is a 22-year-old hacker. He is a Canadian and Kazakh national and a resident of Canada.
People who said they know Baratov told The Associated Press he's an exotic car buff who has owned an Aston Martin, Lamborghini, Porsche and Mercedes, among others. His Facebook page is peppered with photos of cars and includes one post in which he says he was suspended from school four years ago for threatening to kill a former friend as a joke.
"At first, I felt really upset as I have never got into trouble before; but time off school allowed me to work on my online projects 24/7, and really move my businesses to the next level," he apparently wrote.
"I was well off in high school to be able to afford driving a BMW 7 series and pay off a mortgage on my first house; however, all the extra free time allowed me to make triple and even quadruple the normal amount. By the time my suspension was done, I changed my whole life plan!"
Mike Le, owner of All In Detailings in Mississauga, Ontario, said Baratov was once a popular and flashy client but reserved about anything personal.
"All my friends know him too, and none of them know anything about his life," Le said. "He's very secretive about his life."
Friend Saqar Khudairy confirmed the Facebook profile as Baratov's and said his pal told him he owned a network of servers that hosted websites, mainly in Russia.
"He's a really nice guy. I got a great impression from when I met him. This is a huge shock," said Khudairy, 20.
— Alexsey Alexseyevich Belan, also known as "Magg," is a 29-year-old Russian who was born in Latvia when it was still part of the Soviet Union and has been on the FBI's list of most wanted hackers for more than three years.
He was indicted in Nevada in 2012 and in California in 2013, accused of computer fraud and abuse, aggravated identity theft and other crimes related to hacking into three different e-commence companies in the U.S. Arrested in Europe in 2013, he made it back to Russia before he could be extradited. Interpol has issued a request to member nations for his arrest and extradition, and in December he was one of two hackers designated for sanctions by President Barack Obama for "significant malicious cyber-enabled misappropriation of personal identifiers for private financial gain."
— Dmitry Aleksandrovich Dokuchaev, also known as "Patrick Nagel," is an officer in the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, assigned to Center 18, which is the Russian intelligence agency's Center for Information Security. The 33-year-old major was arrested in December as part of a treason case, Russian media have reported. Little is known about the nature of the treason charge.
The U.S. Justice Department would not confirm that account.
In 2011, Dokuchaev was identified by the pseudonym "Forb" in the Russian-language magazine Hacker. In a 2004 interview with the Russian newspaper Vedomosti, Forb boasted of making money from credit-card fraud and breaking into U.S. government websites.
— Igor Anatolyevich Sushchin is Dokuchaev's superior at the Russian intelligence agency. He also was "embedded as a purported employee and head of information security" at a Russian investment bank. There, the 43-year-old Russian monitored communications of bank employees, but it's not clear if the bank knew he was an intelligence officer.
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Associated Press writers Rob Gillies in Toronto and Howard Amos in Moscow contributed to this report.
