Back in June of 2014, a Yahoo account that I used for personal matters as well as for OB Rag business and communications was hacked. I lost thousands (at least 2300) of email address that I had gathered over the years as my contact list. I wrote about the hack and the loss. Here is part of what I said then:
Yes, it is true, and at first, I sort of laughed it off, as I went ahead and changed my password to the email account that was hacked on Thursday, June 19.
But then I realized all 2300 of my email contacts were gone ! – stolen by the hacker. Hundreds of those were my OB Rag email accounts. (It was my personal yahoo email account that was hacked – not the OB Rag gmail account.)
This is a real blow – as it’s through emails that I contact OBceans, planning and town council leaders, other activists, other journalists. And now I have none. I have no way of contacting the hundreds of people on my “OB Alert” list for example.
Yes, I’ve contacted Yahoo and they’re working on it and hopefully they’ll be able to re-establish all my contacts.
Yahoo never did contact me.
Who did it?
We never found out, but did say this:
We found two sources of being hacked: Pennsylvania and Nigeria. They were able to hack into my busy email account and redirect my emails to another email account with my name but one that only they could open.
This all becomes relevant now as just over a week ago, the US Justice Department charged two Russian intelligence officers with coordinating a wide criminal conspiracy that stole data on 500 million Yahoo accounts in 2014.
Here’s more from the New York Times:
The Russian government used the information obtained by the intelligence officers and two other men to spy on a range of targets, from White House and military officials to executives at banks, two American cloud computing companies, an airline and even a gambling regulator in Nevada, according to an indictment. The stolen data was also used to spy on Russian government officials and business executives, federal prosecutors said.
Russians have been accused of other cyberattacks on the United States — most notably the theft of emails last year from the Democratic National Committee. But the Yahoo case is the first time that federal prosecutors have brought cybercrime charges against Russian intelligence officials, according to the Justice Department.
Particularly galling to American investigators was that the two Russian intelligence agents they say directed the scheme, Dmitry Aleksandrovich Dokuchaev and Igor Anatolyevich Sushchin, worked for an arm of Russia’s Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., that is supposed to help foreign intelligence agencies catch cybercriminals. Instead, the officials helped the hackers avoid detection.
Back to my Yahoo hack job. Almost immediately, friends began receiving emails that I was in the Ukraine and was stranded and needed money, so send it quick. I’m sure many people other than my friends have received similar fake requests.
I really hope you get this quickly. I could not inform anyone about our trip, because it was impromptu. we had to be in Ukraine for Tour.. . we misplaced our wallet and cell phone on our way back to the hotel we lodge in after we went for sight seeing. The wallet contained all the valuables we had. Now our passport is in custody of the hotel management pending when we make payment.
I am sorry if i am inconveniencing you, but i have only very few people to run to now. i will be indeed very grateful if i can get a short term loan from you ($2,580). this will enable me sort our hotel bills and get my sorry self back home. I will really appreciate whatever you can afford in assisting me with. I promise to refund it in full as soon as soon as I return. let me know if you can be of any assistance. Please, let me know soonest.
Thanks so much
Yeah, thanks so much Dmitry or Igor, or whomever worked on my account. I’m not blaming all Russians, just you guys and your Kremlin boss.
Actually, I have no problems with the Russian people. They’re stuck just like we are with a leader they don’t want.
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