Posted on 03/15/2017 7:38:37 AM PDT by Theoria
The Justice Department is set to announce Wednesday the indictments of two Russian spies and two criminal hackers in connection with the heist of 500 million Yahoo user accounts in 2014, marking the first U.S. criminal cyber charges ever against Russian government officials.
The indictments target two members of the Russian intelligence agency FSB, and two hackers hired by the Russians.
The charges include hacking, wire fraud, trade secret theft and economic espionage, according to officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the charges have not yet been announced. The indictments are part of the largest hacking case brought by the United States.
The charges are unrelated to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the FBIs investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. But the move reflects the U.S. governments increasing desire to hold foreign governments accountable for malicious acts in cyberspace.
The FBI and the Justice Department declined to comment.
The United States does not have an extradition treaty with Russia, but officials have said that taking steps such as charges and imposing sanctions can be a deterrent. People also sometimes slip up and travel to a country that is able and willing to transfer them to the United States for prosecution.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Looks like all Obama holdovers. What could go wrong?
Sessions needs to get a handle on this real fast!
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/14/politics/justice-yahoo-hack-russia/index.html?adkey=bn
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 NSAs acquisitions directorate sends millions of records every day from internal Yahoo! and Google networks to data warehouses at the agencys 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)
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