Canadian of Kazakh origin arrested, extradited to USA over spying and hacking allegations

[Peter ODonnell]

The top story on the news in Canada today is either the blizzard in Quebec or this story about the arrest of four men in several countries, one of whom is a 22-year-old computer whiz and recent graduate living in Canada (near Hamilton, Ontario) and originally from Kazakhstan.

Basically, the story is that he was hacking into e-mail accounts as an extension of the big Yahoo breach, and was in the pay of the Russian security service FSB. He was arrested and extradited to the U.S.A. on Wednesday. This link will provide more details. Other than the fact that I heard this on the news, I have no information to add nor have I formed any opinion about this at all. It seems like a big deal.

His neighbors say he was living a lavish lifestyle including fast cars in an upscale neighborhood. One could draw the conclusion that somebody was paying him a lot of money to hack into e-mail accounts.

http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ancaster-man-arrested-over-massive-yahoo-breach-1.3326034

[Peter ODonnell]

Trying the link again

http://www.toronto.ctvnews.ca/ancaster-man-arrested-over-massive-yahoo-breach-1.3326034

[Peter ODonnell]

I think it’s 50-50 whether this is just a story about Yahoo hacking and a few Russians making a lot of money, or some huge political story of unpredictable dimensions. So it should be of considerable interest.

The guy is still in jail in Canada awaiting an extradition hearing on Friday. In all likelihood he will be sent down for trial, apparently California where the Yahoo lawsuits are all happening. Attorney-General Sessions is apparently in the loop on this.

[American Infidel]

[Tin Foil hat on] - How long before the media tries to insinuate that this guy may have been the Russian conduit to ‘hacking’ the election? Perhaps he can be ‘enticed’ to make that claim himself in order to cut a deal.

[thinden]

didn’t the yahoo hack occur a year or two ago.

why are they dredging up this old new now?

[silverleaf]

Because . ... Russia

It seems like this guy is a thief not a spy
But
Because.. ...Russia

[silverleaf]

When are they going to bag China for hacking the OPM data base and stealing the identities of virtually every federal worker?

[Candor7]

Canada gets rid of its terrorists by exporting them to the USA.

A Khazak in hand is worth two in the Bush?

How many more of these sleepers does Canada have? Most of them have been hugged by Trudeau.

[mac_truck]

According to the Federal grand jury indictment, Russian FSB facilitated the Yahoo breach and then used the information gleaned to target various people and organizations both in Russia and around the world.

It will be interesting to see if the Feds can prove the Russian FSB connection to the cyber criminal activity.

[Former Proud Canadian]

"How many more of these sleepers does Canada have?"

I don't think this guy was a "sleeper", more like an active agent.

More directly, to you question, less than 10% of the number of sleepers in the USA. They could probably all be rounded up on a Friday afternoon, if you know what I mean.

[bert]

The real story is that the US FBI and the Russian FSB were collaborating to end cyber crime. Reported yesterday on Fox News with this story

[scenicsoap]

didn’t the yahoo hack occur a year or two ago.
why are they dredging up this old new now?

---

A few days before the election, after entering my username and password, the yahoo mail site would just go into a loop and never open or do anything. I tried their on line fixes as there is no customer service to call for help. After about 2 months I started a new email with a local co-op, with local service.

I did get an automated message from Yahoo regarding a non-secure way to access the email account. I did go there to try to get my contact list and that was totally gone as well as most older messages that had been in my inbox. Never a word from Yahoo Mail. If you go to www.downdetector.com, they monitor different websites with issues and people can leave comments. Yahoo Mail (free) and Yahoo Business Mail (paid sub) are and have been having a real mess, all without customer support.

Yahoo Mail is having ongoing issues.

[JudyinCanada]

Ancaster is just around the corner from me - yes, it’s a little upscale. Glad they got him, and a little surprised Trudeau hasn’t stepped in somehow.

[Verginius Rufus]

Man’s name is Karim Baratov. “Karim” sounds Muslim (as in Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). Kazakhstan is about 70% Muslim, 30% non-Muslim (mostly Russian Orthodox).

[Peter ODonnell]

All true but from info available and neighbors’ reactions sounded more like an atheist, saw his pic on TV and he looks of mixed racial background with some Oriental thrown into the mix (origin of the computer skills no doubt).

Getting the impression that this plays out as one of three options,

(a) four lone wolves interacting with rogue FSB agents mainly to make money

(b) organized state-sponsored hacking for political gain with hackers given carte blanche to make money from non-political sources that they uncovered in the process

(c) double game of some kind, byzantine implications

So I think it’s more than just a part of the Yahoo hacking story (which is big in itself) and yes, I think it will intrude into the core of the current spy vs spy drama but who knows whether in a pro or anti Trump fashion once all narratives are on the table?

Could be packaged up as smoking gun of Russian interference against Democrats or as earlier signs of Russian activity without that agenda or as pro-Trump now finally we are getting some co-operation and the FSB has cleaned house.

And whether any of this is true or false is anybody’s guess.

[Grampa Dave]

So did the Russians hijack Yahoo or did the CIA do it and blame it on the Russians?

This tidbit below is buried in the Muscular writeup by Wikipedia.

Operational details:

According to the leaked document the NSA’s acquisitions directorate sends millions of records every day from internal Yahoo! and Google networks to data warehouses at the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland. The programme operates via an access point known as DS-200B, which is outside the United States, and it relies on an unnamed telecommunications operator to provide secret access for the NSA and the GCHQ.[3]

According to a post-it style note from the presentation, the exploitation relied on the fact that (at the time at least) data was transmitted unencrypted inside Google's private cloud, with "Google Front End Servers" stripping and respectively adding back SSL from/to external connections.

According to the Washington Post: "Two engineers with close ties to Google exploded in profanity when they saw the drawing." After the information about MUSCULAR was published by the press, Google announced that it was working on deploying encrypted communication between its datacenters.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUSCULAR_(surveillance_program)