2 Russian Spies Indicted in Yahoo Hack

The Department of Justice on Wednesday morning announced the indictment of two Russian spies and two hackers for their involvement in consumer data breaches at Yahoo.

The data breaches affected 500 million user accounts in 2014. (For more information on this and other political stories, subscribe to the White House Patch for daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

Charged were Dmitry Aleksandrovich Dokuchaev, 33, a Russian national and resident, and Igor Anatolyevich Sushchin, 43, a Russian national and resident, both agents of the country's Federal Security Service, or FSB. Also charged are Alexsey Alexseyevich Belan, 29, a Russian national and resident, and Karim Baratov, 22, a Canadian and Kazakh national and Canada resident.

The four defendants face a combined 47 charges, including conspiracy, computer fraud, economic espionage, theft of trade secrets and aggravated identity theft, according to a DOJ press release.

“The defendants targeted Yahoo accounts of Russian and U.S. government officials, including cyber security, diplomatic and military personnel," Acting Assistant Attorney General Mary B. McCord said at Wednesday's press conference. "They also targeted Russian journalists; numerous employees of other providers whose networks the conspirators sought to exploit; and employees of financial services and other commercial entities."

Belan, one of the hackers, Belan has been indicted twice before in the United States "for three intrusions into e-commerce companies that victimized millions of customers, and he has been one of the FBI’s most wanted cyber criminals for more than three years," she added.

"The indictment unequivocally shows the attacks on Yahoo were state-sponsored. We are deeply grateful to the FBI for investigating these crimes and the DOJ for bringing charges against those responsible,” Chris Madsen, Yahoo's assistant general counsel and head of global law enforcement, said in a statement after Wednesday's announcement.

The Washington Post previously noted the charges are not directly related to the hacking of emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta. However, they do show the Justice Department's willingness to go after foreign cyber espionage and Russia in particular.

Watch the announcement below:

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