One of the suspects who allegedly hacked about 500 million Yahoo! Inc. email accounts worked for billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, Bloomberg News reported. Igor Sushchin served as head of security at Renaissance Capital's brokerage unit, but he resigned after he was indicted in connection with the Yahoo! hacking.
Sushchin is reportedly one of two alleged Russian intelligence officers who decided to get their hands on valuable consumer information by illegally accessing Yahoo! email accounts, according to several reports. The second agent also allegedly worked for the Federal Security Service.
Renaissance Capital said it had no knowledge that Sushchin was facing charges in connection with the Yahoo! hacking incident and had learned about it from media reports. Renaissance Capital also said it did not know that Sushchin had been charged with any wrongdoing in connection with his employment at the bank.
Sushchin had been working at Renaissance Capital's brokerage unit since 2010, according to sources. He was accused of illegally executing intelligence gathering starting from January 2014 until 2016.
In another news related to the Yahoo! hacking incident, CBS News reported that "hacker-for-hire" Karim Baratov had been tagged an "extremely high flight risks." Baratov, who was indicted for computer hacking and economic espionage, among other things, had used "spear-phishing" to make Yahoo! users believe that they were getting legitimate emails.
Baratov's lawyer, Amedeo Dicarlo, maintained that the allegations against his client were unfounded. He did not provide any details regarding Baratov's personal and professional life but he did say that the alleged hacker is an entrepreneur.
The other Yahoo! hacker also allegedly looked into emails of Yahoo! users to get ahold of credit card and gift card account numbers, according to CBS News. Baratov will appear in an April 5 bail hearing.
Jobs & Hire previously reported that hacking collective Anonymous plans to take on more central banks.
