The U.S. Department of Justice will charge two members of a Russian intelligence agency and two Russian hackers for their roles in the 2014 Yahoo data breach that affected roughly 500 million user accounts, according to The Washington Post.
Here are five things to know about the DOJ's indictment announcement.
1. DOJ officials will indict Dmitry Dokuchaev, Igor Sushchin, Alexsey Belan and Karim Baratov Wednesday for their alleged roles in the 2014 breach. Mr. Dokuchaev and Mr. Sushchin both worked for the cyber investigative arm of the Russian intelligence agency FSB, whose work mirrors that of the FBI's cyber division, according to the report.
2. All four individuals will reportedly be charged with hacking, wire fraud, trade secret theft and economic espionage.
3. The indictment represents one of the largest hacking cases pursued by the U.S., and is the first case in which U.S. criminal cyber charges have been brought against Russian officials, according to the report.
4. Officials said the individuals sought intelligence information on select journalists, dissidents and U.S. government officials. However, the individuals reportedly used the email cache for their own financial gain, conducting subsequent spamming scams and other operations, The Washington Post reports.
5. FBI officials said the charges are unrelated to the 2016 hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Officials have not determined whether the four individuals were behind the data breach Yahoo suffered in 2013 which compromised more than 1 billion user accounts or if there is a link between the two intrusions, according to the report.