Ancaster man charged in massive Yahoo data breach

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An Ancaster man is one of four people, including two Russian security officers, facing criminal charges in one of the largest cyber-hack attacks in history.

Karim Baratov, 22, was arrested in Ancaster at 8:05 a.m. on Tuesday by the Toronto Police Service Fugitive Unit in connection to the massive hack of Yahoo users account information in 2014.

A grand jury in California indicted Baratov and three others, two of them allegedly officers of the Russian Federal Security Service, for computer hacking, economic espionage and other criminal offenses.

The U.S Department of Justice said in a news release, “The defendants used unauthorized access to Yahoo’s systems to steal information from about at least 500 million Yahoo accounts and then used some of that stolen information to obtain unauthorized access to the contents of accounts at Yahoo, Google and other webmail providers, including accounts of Russian journalists, U.S. and Russian government officials and private-sector employees of financial, transportation and other companies.”

One of the defendants also allegedly used his access to the Yahoo network for personal financial gain by searching for Yahoo users credit card and gift card account numbers, and taking the contacts of at least 30 million Yahoo accounts to facilitate a spam campaign.

Baratov appeared in a Hamilton courtroom Wednesday morning wearing a black overcoat and glasses. His hearing was rescheduled for Friday because Baratov’s legal counsel was not able to be present this morning.

Thanks to social media, we’re learning a lot about Karim Baratov.  He wasn’t modest about his income and how he liked to spend his money- including his nearly million dollar Ancaster home – which saw quite a lot of action yesterday. Nicole Martin talked to neighbours today.