Canadian sentenced to 5 years in prison for hacking accounts on behalf of FSB

The 23-year-old Canadian Karim Baratov has been sentenced in the United States to five years in prison and a fine of $2.25 million. Baratov pleaded guilty to account hacking on behalf of the Russian secret service FSB.

According to the ruling of the US Department of Justice, the fine that Baratov has to pay includes all the property of the Canadian. Baratov was paid for selling credentials and for hacking specific Yahoo and Google accounts on behalf of the FSB.

At the end of last year, Baratov pleaded guilty. He confessed to having accessed more than 11,000 accounts between 2010 and 2017. He accessed the accounts through targeted phishing attacks, in which he impersonated the victim’s email provider. He sold the credentials and also targeted specific accounts that the Russian FSB was interested in.

In addition to Baratov, two Russian spies and another hacker were charged by the US Department of Justice last year. Together with the convicted Canadian, they are said to be responsible for the major hack at Yahoo in 2014, which affected half a billion accounts.

Karim Baratov was born in Kazakhstan, but has Canadian nationality and lives in Canada. He was arrested in that country in 2017 and extradited to the United States. The three other suspects are all in Russia and are unlikely to be tried.