Russian hacker found guilty in LinkedIn-Dropbox data theft

[LunaSea]

July 11, 2020



A jury found Russian hacker Yevgeniy Nikulin guilty for breaching the internal networks of LinkedIn, Dropbox, and Formspring back in 2012 and then selling their user databases on the black market.

The jury verdict was passed on Friday during what was the first trial to be held in California since the onset of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.


According to court documents and evidence presented at the trial, Nikulin hacked all three companies in the spring of 2012.

The hacker first breached LinkedIn between March 3 and March 4, 2012, after he infected an employee's laptop with malware that allowed Nikulin to abuse the employee's VPN and access LinkedIn's internal network.

From here, the hacker stole roughly 117 million user records, data that included usernames, passwords, and emails.

Nikulin then used the LinkedIn data to send spear-phishing emails to employees at other companies, including people working at Dropbox, where he was able to breach an employee account, and then invite himself to a Dropbox folder holding company data.

This intrusion lasted from May 14, 2012, to July 25, 2012, and authorities say Nikulin was able to make off with a trove of information on 68 million Dropbox users, including usernames, emails, and hashed passwords.

Nikulin was also able to phish his way into the employee account of a Formspring engineer, from where, between June 13, 2012, and June 29, 2012, he is believed to have gained access to the company's internal user database, consisting of 30 million user details.

Nikulin then sold the data on the underground hacker market to other cyber-criminals. The data surfaced online in 2015 and 2016, as various data traders put the data for sale on publicly-accessible forums and criminal e-commerce stores.


https://www.zdnet.com/article/russian-hacker-found-guilty-for-dropbox-linkedin-and-formspring-breaches/