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WASHINGTON, March 15 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Justice Department announced Wednesday charges against four suspects in the massive 2014 Yahoo data breach, including two Russian security service officers.
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 to obtain unauthorized access to the contents of accounts at Yahoo, Google and other webmail providers, the Justice Department said in a statement.
Two of the defendants, Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin, worked for the Russian Federal Security Service, known as the FSB, according to the statement.
The other two suspects are Alexsey Alexseyevich Belan, a Russian national, and Karim Baratov, a Canadian and Kazakh national.
"The United States will vigorously investigate and prosecute the people behind such attacks to the fullest extent of the law," U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said.
"Today we continue to pierce the veil of anonymity surrounding cyber crimes," said FBI Director James Comey. "We are shrinking the world to ensure that cyber criminals think twice before targeting U.S. persons and interests."
Meanwhile, according to a report of Russia's Sputnik news agency on Wednesday, Washington has never approached Moscow to address the accusations and the probe against Russian nationals allegedly involved in hacker attacks on Yahoo accounts, citing a highly-placed Russian source.
"This fact, as well as the absence of concrete details of the case, lead to believe that another spiral of 'Russian hacker paranoia' is being used as an instrument of political struggle in the United States," the source told Sputnik.
