LinkedIn Hacker, Wanted by US and Russian, Can be Deported to Either State
By Prempal Singh
The alleged Russian hacker, who had been arrested by the Czech police in Prague last October on suspicion of massive 2012 data breach at LinkedIn, can be banished to either the US or Russian Federation, a Czech court dominated on Tuesday.
Yevgeniy Aleksandrovich Nikulin, a 29-years-old Russian national, is accused of allegedly hacking not simply LinkedIn, but also the online cloud storage platform Dropbox, and now-defunct social-networking company Formspring.
However, he has repeatedly denied all allegations.
Nikulin was arrested in Prague on October 5 by the Czech law enforcement officials after Interpol issued an international arrest warrant against him.
Nikulin appeared at a court hearing organized in the high-security prison in Prague on Tuesday and emaciated after 8 months in solitary confinement.
The court ruling, pending appeal, left the final decision in the hands of Czech Justice Minister Robert Pelikan, who are able to approve premise to one of the countries and block the other.
The United Claims has requested Nikulin premise to carry out cracking attacks and stealing information from several American sociable networking companies, including LinkedIn, Dropbox, and Formspring, between March 2012 to this summer 2012.
Nevertheless, Russia, where Nikulin is facing a lesser charge, has expected his extradition on the individual cyber theft charge of stealing $3, 450 via the Internet in 2009.
“Both [case] documents are extremely, very sufficient for reasonable suspicion that [the offenses] took place and this there is a reason to press charges, ” the judge said.
Hacker Statements FBI Pressured Him to Confess to US election Hackers
Nikulin’s arrest last October came three times prior to the United States legally accused Russia of cracking the Democratic National Panel (DNC) and interfering in the 2016 presidential election.
Nikulin’s legal professional says the case is a system, indicating that his detain may have deeper armor than over the cyber attacks against American organizations.
The Guardian reported Nikulin was interrogated in Prague, in which he presently remains imprisoned, by FBI special agent Jeffrey Miller.
Nikulin wrote in a letter from prison that during his interrogation, Miller reportedly brought up the united states election hacking and stated that the FBI agent pressured him to confess to the DNC hack and promised him good treatment if he accepted to cooperate.
Nikulin composed in the letter that he rejected the offer. His legal professional indicated that Nikulin was not a hacker, but simply a sufferer of the FBI plot.
“Do you actually imagine that a high-ranking FBI agent is going to travel completely from San Francisco just to check out this guy his rights?, Nikulin legal professional said.
Mark Galeotti, a senior security researcher at the Company of International Relations Prague, also showed his matter about an FBI agent traveling to another country to extradite a hacker.
“An FBI agent traveling from the US to a third country apart of an premise request is extremely unconventional and highlights that the case is seen as significant, ” Galeotti said, as quoted by the Guardian.
Nikulin’s Russian legal professional explained that his customer’s life revolved around buying and selling luxury vehicles, adding that Nikulin was “useless with computers” and capable of checking his email and no the, far from being a super-hacker who are able to hack big firms.
Tuesday’s court experiencing was held in a little room inside the imprisonment for security reasons, that Nikulin’s Czech legal professional said, “In all my twenty-five years as an attorney, I don’t remember any cases being tried inside the prison, including melodrama killers or organized criminal offenses cases. ”
Now, the final decision is in the hands of the Czech Justice Minister Robert Pelikan, who may be slated to decide where Nikulin will be extradited: The US, where he can face a “disproportionately harsh” sentence of 54 years behind pubs, or Russia, where this individual faces a smaller demand of cyber theft.
Source: thehackernews.com