What the US accused Russian hacker: exploring court documents

What the US accused Russian hacker: exploring court documents

28 February meeting in San Francisco Federal Grand jury approved the indictment document in the case of the hacking of American computers, which involved two employees of the FSB, born in Latvia of Russian hacker and a canadian citizen who came from Kazakhstan.

Tridtsatistranichnyj document, consisting of 47 items, initially undisclosed and was made public only last week, when the canadian province of Ontario, was arrested on U.S. warrant for 22-year-old Baratov Karim, aka Kay, of Toloveru Karim, or Karim Ahmed Tokbergenov.

Young Baratov, placed in a network the number of pictures on the background of expensive cars and own a house valued at 930 thousand canadian dollars (about 700 thousand U.S.), most likely, will long remain the only defendant in the case, was taken into custody. His accomplices are in Russia, which has no extradition Treaty with the United States.

The American authorities will demand the extradition of Baratova from Canada. Hearing about his release on bail in Ontario court on April 5.

His lawyer Amedeo DiCarlo told the press that Baratov innocent and a “victim of political conspiracy”.

His accomplices are 33-year-old Dmitry Dokuchaev (nick Patrick Nag), which the FBI calls the FSB major, his immediate superior 43-year-old Igor Suschyn and known in the hacker world 29-year-old Aleksey Alekseyevich Belan (Nicky Luquette, Abyroi Valkov, Abyvaig, Fedyunya, M4G, Moy, Yawik, Quarker), which, according to the FBI, was last seen in Krasnodar.

According to the FBI, in the past Dokuchaev was an active hacker, but then took him to the Center of information security of the FSB, or the 18th center.

Dokuchaev and Suschyn

From December 2016 he is in jail “Lefortovo” on charge in high treason in favor of the United States (article 275 of the criminal code).

In addition to Dokuchaev in this case are one of the leaders of CDC FSB Sergey Mikhailov, head of the Department of investigation of computer incidents “Kaspersky Lab” Ruslan Stoyanov and entrepreneur George Fomchenko.

The rank Sushine the FBI is not known. As a member of the 18th division of the FSB, he, according to “Kommersant”, at least since 2011, were “seconded” to the structure of the group ONEXIM Mikhail Prokhorov. As reported by the newspaper in a press-service “the capital Renaissance”, Suschyn several years was an employee of OOO “Renaissance broker” but last Thursday, the company terminated his employment.

Belan has been involved in the United States to the court for the third time. In 2012 and 2013 against him was prosecuted in Nevada and California on charges of computer fraud and identity theft, and the FBI brought him in 2012 to your watch list is cybercriminals.

Interpol issued a “Red notice”, obliging all its members to hold belana. In 2013, he was arrested in Greece but has avoided extradition to the US, fled to Russia. The circumstances of his escape are unclear.

December 29, 2016, President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on belana and hacker Evgeny Bogachev, who, as far as is known, lives in Anapa.

Mutually beneficial cooperation with the FSB

As alleged in the charging documents submitted by prosecutors to the Federal court for the Northern district of California, instead of delay belana, FSB was attached to it. Dokuchaev, Suschyn and at least one employee of the FSB, identified in court documents under the number “3” that gave him the job and familiar with the service manuals that were supposed to help Belan to escape from the surveillance of law enforcement.

He also provided material on how the FSB is investigating computer hacking and catching hackers.

According to prosecutors, in 2014 the accused broke into the computers of American company Yahoo and obtained data on at least 500 million of its mailboxes.

Success was achieved due to the fact that Belan was able to steal part of a secret database Yahoo users, containing their names, telephone numbers, information for recovery of email accounts and the source data for making temporary files.

Using these data, Belan has gained access to more than 30 million accounts and used them to send spam.

Scammers have lost access to Yahoo in September of last year, but continued to use stolen company information prior to December.

On behalf of the FSB Alexei Belan also obtained illegal access to the account management system Yahoo. Using it and a partial database of the company, Dokuchaev, Suschyn and Belan found of interest FSB the mail user accounts and files produced for penetration. So they had a chance to get more than 6500 mailboxes.

Often their victims posed any apparent interest to the intelligence services — for example, Russian journalists, among whom the Prosecutor calls some correspondent of “Kommersant”, the Russian and American government officials and members of “prominent Russian companies involved in cyber security”. This category also included staff from other service providers, who were intended to use the plotters.

But sometimes, the accused broke into personal accounts of employees of commercial structures, such as unnamed “investment banking firm”, the French transport company, Swiss bitcoin wallet or an American airline.

Commission from online pharmacy

Doing the job their supervisors from FSB, Belan did not forget about yourself. If you believe prosecutors, he had stolen details of credit cards and gift cards, as well as directs traffic seekers means from impotence to address some pharmacies that rewarded his Commission.

According to the indictment, when Dokuchaev and Suschyn learned that they are interested in the object has email accounts from other providers such as Google, they charged his canadian accomplice Baratova they can get into it and paid him a Commission at the rate of 100 USD for each account.

A total of Baratov allegedly received the illegal access to more than 80 mailboxes.

March 7, the U.S. justice Department handed over to canadian authorities for a temporary warrant for his arrest. The Prosecutor’s office also requires you to confiscate the contents of his account in payment of the company PayPal in the name of the Elite Space Corporation, gray Aston Martin DBS with custom room “Mr. Karim” and a black Mercedes Benz C54.

All four brought a whole bunch of charges, from computer fraud to conspiracy to commit economic espionage. Theoretically, they face decades in Federal prison.

Vladimir Kozlovsky, New York

Comments

comments