The indictment of four Russians on Wednesday for a 2014 attack on Yahoo lifts the curtain on one of the murkiest areas of cyber espionage: the rise of the cyber privateers, accomplished criminals with a licence to hack.
US prosecutors say two of the men charged — Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin — are senior officials at the FSB, Russia’s main state security agency. They authorised the criminal exploitation of 500m Yahoo users’ credentials — including for an erectile dysfunction medication scam — in exchange for access to more targeted intelligence of importance to the Russian government, the indictment alleges.
One senior British intelligence official described Russia as having fostered a network of “modern privateers”, referring to the way monarchs of old granted pirates and mercenaries letters of marque, authorising them to plunder foreign ships.