Prosecutors charge Russian accused of hacking JP Morgan, Dow Jones

New York prosecutors have extradited a Russian hacker accused of breaking into JP Morgan, one of the world’s largest banking institutions.

Moscow resident Andrei Tiurin, 35, was charged Friday after he was extradited from neighboring Georgia, with the theft of over 80 million records from the bank in 2014. The alleged hacker is said to have been under the direction of Gery Shalon, who was separately indicted a year later following the breach.

Tiurin was also charged wire and securities fraud, and aggravated identity theft, racking up the maximum possible prison time to over 80 years.

“Andrei Tyurin, a Russian national, is alleged to have participated in a global hacking campaign that targeted major financial institutions, brokerage firms, news agencies, and other companies,” said Manhattan U.S. attorney Geoffrey Berman in remarks.

Although the indictment did not name the New York-based financial news agency, The Wall Street Journal previously reported the victim as its parent company Dow Jones, following the following the first round of charges in 2015.

The hackers allegedly targeted other firms, including an unnamed Boston, Mass.-based mutual fund and online stock brokerage firm. The indictment said that the hackers exploited the “Heartbleed” vulnerability — a known flaw in the widely used OpenSSL cryptographic library — to gain a foothold into the institution’s network.

Tiurin was also accused of trying to artificially inflate the “price of certain stocks publicly traded in the United States,” and obtained “hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit proceeds” from various hacking campaigns.

“Today’s extradition marks a significant milestone for law enforcement in the fight against cyber intrusions targeting our critical financial institutions,” said Berman.

Dow Jones declined to comment. JP Morgan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

from www.tech-life.in