Yahoo mega-hacker gets five years jail time

A Canadian hacker who helped Russia break into thousands of Yahoo email accounts will spend the next five years behind bars in the US.

Karim Baratov, who last year eventually pleaded guilty to nine felony counts including hacking, identity theft and espionage, has been handed 60 months of jail time by a US district court judge.

Without a guilty plea, he could have faced up to 94 months - or almost eight years.

Mr Baratov, a 23-year-old Canadian citizen from Kazakhstan, admitted that he was a ‘for-hire hacker’ but claimed he had no idea he was working for the Kremlin when he broke into more than 11,000 email accounts between 2010 and March 2017.

His actions are believed to be just a small section of a wider 500-million account breach that made the news in September 2016.

Assistant US attorney general John Demers said: “Criminal hackers and the countries that sponsor them make a grave mistake when they target American companies and citizens. We will identify them wherever they are and bring them to justice.”