At large: The 47-count Justice Department indictment includes charges of conspiracy, computer fraud and abuse, economic espionage, theft of trade secrets, wire fraud, access device fraud and aggravated identify theft. Pictured is a poster of suspected Russian hackers.
WASHINGTON: 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 US 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 US presidential election and possible links between Russian figures and associates of US President Donald Trump, and uncertainty about whether Trump is willing to respond forcefully to aggression from Moscow in cyberspace and elsewhere.
