A police transport vehicle leaves the John Sopinka Courthouse, where Karim Baratov appeared in front of a judge in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada March 15, 2017 in connection with a U.S. Justice Department investigation into the 2014 hacking of Yahoo. REUTERS/Peter Power
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Wednesday charged two Russian intelligence agents and two criminal hackers with masterminding the 2014 theft of 500 million Yahoo accounts, marking the first time the U.S. government has criminally charged Russian spies for cyber offences.
The charges came amid a swirl of controversies relating to alleged Kremlin-backed hacking of the 2016 U.S. presidential election and possible links between Russian figures and associates of U.S. President Donald Trump, and uncertainty about whether Trump is willing to respond forcefully to aggression from Moscow in cyberspace and elsewhere.
