Quick Take: Zachary Goldman on the US indictment of Russians allegedly behind Yahoo hack

“In a March 15 indictment, the US Department of Justice alleged that two Russian spies working with two criminal conspirators were behind a massive hack that stole data on 500 million Yahoo accounts in 2014. According to the charges, the defendants used some of that stolen information to access to the contents of email accounts of Russian journalists, US and Russian government officials, and employees of financial, transportation, and other companies. One defendant, the indictment alleges, obtained credit card and gift card numbers from the Yahoo data and exploited it for his personal financial gain. The New York Times reports that this is the first case in which the Justice Department has brought cybercrime charges against Russian intelligence officials.”