Tuesday, June 13, 2017 10:49:36 PM
Court: Russian hacker can be extradited to US or Russia (Update)
"Global cyberattack disrupts shipper FedEx, UK health system"
May 30, 2017 by Karel Janicek
A Czech court ruled Tuesday that a Russian man who faces charges of hacking computers at American companies can be extradited either to the United States or Russia—and the suspect immediately appealed his possible extradition to the United States.
Czech authorities arrested Yevgeniy Nikulin in Prague on Oct. 5 in cooperation with the FBI after Interpol issued an international warrant. He is accused of hacking computers and stealing information from LinkedIn, Dropbox and other companies.
Moscow also wants him extradited on a separate charge of internet theft in 2009. Russian officials had previously said they were working to prevent his extradition to the U.S.
Judge Jaroslav Pytloun ruled Tuesday that the extradition requests from both countries meet all the necessary legal conditions.
The 29-year-old has denied wrongdoing.
"I'm innocent," Nikulin said through a translator at the hearing Tuesday. "I haven't done anything illegal. I have nothing to do with that."
Nikulin appealed his extradition to the United States. He has three days to decide if he will agree to being extradited to Russia.
Justice Minister Robert Pelikan will have the final say on where Nikulin goes after Prague's High Court decides on his appeal.
Nikulin's defense lawyers have rejected the U.S. charges, saying they are based on one FBI agent, and suggested the U.S. was seeking him for political reasons—to use him as a pawn in the investigation into alleged Russian hacking in the U.S. election.
The alleged hacker claimed in the courtroom Tuesday that he was twice approached by U.S. authorities—in November and in February—in the absence of his previous lawyer. He said they urged him to falsely testify that he was cooperating in the hacking attack on the Democratic National Committee ordered by Russian authorities. He said U.S. authorities would, in exchange, give him money and a life in the United States.
"I rejected doing it," Nikulin said.
The U.S. has accused Russia of coordinating the theft and disclosure of emails from the Democratic National Committee and other institutions and individuals in the U.S. to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Russia has vigorously denied that.
There was no indication that Nikulin's case is connected to the DNC hacking accusation.
https://phys.org/news/2017-05-court-russian-hacker-extradited-russia.html
==
Russian suspected hacker moves step closer to US extradition
FBI accuses Yevgeniy Nikulin of hacking LinkedIn, Formspring and Dropbox, and Russia has also filed extradition request
The arrest of Yevgeniy Nikulin in Prague. Photograph: Police of the Czech Republic
Shaun Walker in Prague
Wednesday 31 May 2017 04.04 AEST
Last modified on Wednesday 31 May 2017 08.10 AEST
A Russian suspected hacker has moved a step closer to being sent to the US as a Czech judge gave tentative approval for an extradition to go ahead, during a court hearing held inside a high-security prison in Prague.
Yevgeniy Nikulin, who was arrested at a restaurant in the Czech capital last October and is accused by the FBI .. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/fbi .. of massive hacks of US companies, appeared at the hearing pale and emaciated after eight months in solitary confinement.
The murky case has so far thrown up far more questions than answers, but one thing is clear: US authorities are determined to extradite the 29-year-old Muscovite, who drove a Lamborghini and socialised with the children of top Russian officials, and Moscow is determined to get him back, filing its own extradition request.
-
Alleged hacker held in Prague at center of 'intense' US-Russia tug of war
Read more > https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/27/us-russia-hacking-yevgeniy-nikulin-linkedin-dropbox
-
The FBI accused Nikulin of responsibility for huge password hacks on LinkedIn, Dropbox and Formspring, in 2012. Nikulin’s arrest last October came three days before the Obama administration officially accused .. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/07/us-russia-dnc-hack-interfering-presidential-election .. Russia of hacking the Democratic National Committee and interfering in the election.
During the election campaign, Trump called on Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails. After the election, he initially dismissed US intelligence agencies’ findings that Russia .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/russia .. had interfered in the electoral process, before eventually grudgingly accepting them.
Nikulin’s lawyers say the case is a set-up. They say Nikulin was not a hacker and that his life revolved around buying and selling luxury cars, as evidenced by a 2015 interview .. https://autorambler.ru/novosti/dorogoy-ty-moy-lamborghini-v-kakuyu-summu-vletit-superkar-i-ego-11-09-2015.htm .. to a Russian automobile website in which he talked about his love for Lamborghinis.
Nikulin took part in street races on the outskirts of Moscow where he would fraternise with the children of Russian oligarchs and politicians. His lawyers say this explains why Nikulin’s Instagram account featured photographs of him with the children of high-ranking officials, including the daughter of the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, one of Putin’s closest confidants. The account was taken offline shortly after Nikulin was arrested.
Nikulin’s Russian lawyer, Vladimir Makeyev, said Nikulin was “useless with computers” and, far from being a super-hacker, was capable of checking his email and no more.
Special agent Jeffrey Miller, of the San Francisco office of the FBI, appears to believe otherwise. A 17-page affidavit by Miller, seen by the Guardian, outlines the evidence against Nikulin to the Czech court. The affidavit lists some of the aliases Nikulin is alleged to have used, including Chinabig01, Eugene, Uarebeenhacked, John Pattison and itBlackHat.
According to Miller’s affidavit, the FBI evidence is based on “witness interviews including confidential sources, ISP records, court-authorised electronic interceptions, and other sources”. Some of the electronic intercepts were emails from the Gmail account of Alexei Belan, a hacker on the FBI wanted list for allegedly conspiring with Russian FSB agents .. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/15/fbi-charges-two-russian-spies-hackers-yahoo-data-breach .. to perpetrate a huge hack on Yahoo in 2014. Belan is on the FBI’s cyber top 10 most wanted list. None of the raw evidence was provided to the court.
The affidavit relates solely to the hacking of LinkedIn .. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/linkedin , Dropbox and Formspring in 2012, and does not mention any election hacking.
However, Nikulin wrote in a letter from prison that Miller had interrogated him in Prague on 7 February and raised the election hacking. Excerpts of the letter were provided to the Guardian by Nikulin’s lawyers, but there is no way of substantiating the claims he made.
Nikulin claimed Miller demanded he admit to hacking the DNC servers as part of what the FBI is said to have claimed was a nefarious plot ultimately ordered by Trump, and promised him good treatment in the US if he cooperated. Nikulin wrote that he rejected the offer.
A document among the court papers detailing the interrogation on 7 February confirms Miller and assistant US attorney Michelle J Kane were present in person along with four Czech intelligence officials identified only by their initials.
The document states that Nikulin was read his rights, insisted he was not guilty of the charges, and that the interrogation was concluded after just 29 minutes.
Nikulin’s lawyer suggested the record of the interrogation was incomplete and that his client had fallen victim to an FBI plot. “Do you really imagine that a high-ranking FBI agent is going to travel all the way from San Francisco just to read this guy his rights?”
Others close to the case dismissed the idea of an overarching conspiracy, but conceded there were many unusual elements to the case.
One theory is that the FBI is rounding up Russian hackers in the hope they may know others who were involved in the election hacking. A Russian computer programmer was arrested .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/10/russian-computer-programmer-held-in-spain-under-us-warrant .. in Barcelona in April.
“My guess in both of these cases is that US intelligence has only now started gathering intelligence about Russian hackers and how they work with the security services, and they want to use these guys to extract info out of them,” said Andrei Soldatov, a specialist on the Russian security services.
Mark Galeotti, senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations Prague, said the presence of Miller in Prague at least suggested that the case was no ordinary one. “An FBI agent travelling from the US to a third country as part of an extradition request is extremely unusual and highlights that the case is seen as significant,” he said.
The US embassy in Prague, the Department of Justice and the FBI all refused requests for comment on the case. A number of Czech officials declined to comment or claimed no knowledge, and a source close to Czech intelligence said only a very limited number of people inside the service had been briefed on the details of the case.
According to Miller’s testimony, Nikulin crossed into the Schengen zone at the Belarus-Poland border in a black Mercedes on 1 October. He posted a photograph on Instagram from Warsaw on 3 October, and was arrested while sitting down to dinner with his female travelling companion in Prague’s touristy old town on 5 October.
Immediately afterwards, Russia filed its own extradition request over a minor 2009 electronic theft. Nikulin’s lawyers admit the Russian request is unconvincing, but say he is willing to be extradited to Russia. The request appears to be a thinly veiled attempt to keep Nikulin out of US hands.
Russian journalists have found details of the 2009 case in a legal database, but note that it appears not to have been acted on by authorities, leading to suspicions that Nikulin may have done a deal back then. There are frequent reports that Russian authorities waive criminal charges against hackers in return for cooperation with the security agencies.
Both Russia and the US have reportedly put diplomatic pressure on Prague to have Nikulin extradited. The Czech weekly Respekt cited diplomatic sources suggesting that Russia had informally offered to swap Nikulin for a number of Czech citizens wanted by Prague for financial crimes.
Tuesday’s hearing was held in a tiny room inside the prison, an unprecedented measure which was ostensibly for security reasons but also meant only four journalists could access the room. “In all my 25 years as a lawyer, I don’t remember any cases being tried inside the prison, including serial killers or organised crime cases,” said Martin Sadilek, Nikulin’s Czech lawyer.
Nikulin’s mother, who attended the hearing, declined to comment except to say she was worried that her son “looks like skin and bones” and that she believed the case was political.
The judge Jaroslav Pytloun ruled that the requests from both countries met legal requirements, and Nikulin’s lawyers said they would appeal against only the US extradition. After the appeals process is concluded, the Czech justice minister, Robert Pelikan, will make the final decision on where to send Nikulin.
Informed sources in Prague said he was expected to send him to the US. An aide to Pelikan said the minister could not comment on the case for now.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/30/suspected-russian-hacker-step-closer-to-us-extradition-yevgeniy-nikulin
"Global cyberattack disrupts shipper FedEx, UK health system"
May 30, 2017 by Karel Janicek
A Czech court ruled Tuesday that a Russian man who faces charges of hacking computers at American companies can be extradited either to the United States or Russia—and the suspect immediately appealed his possible extradition to the United States.
Czech authorities arrested Yevgeniy Nikulin in Prague on Oct. 5 in cooperation with the FBI after Interpol issued an international warrant. He is accused of hacking computers and stealing information from LinkedIn, Dropbox and other companies.
Moscow also wants him extradited on a separate charge of internet theft in 2009. Russian officials had previously said they were working to prevent his extradition to the U.S.
Judge Jaroslav Pytloun ruled Tuesday that the extradition requests from both countries meet all the necessary legal conditions.
The 29-year-old has denied wrongdoing.
"I'm innocent," Nikulin said through a translator at the hearing Tuesday. "I haven't done anything illegal. I have nothing to do with that."
Nikulin appealed his extradition to the United States. He has three days to decide if he will agree to being extradited to Russia.
Justice Minister Robert Pelikan will have the final say on where Nikulin goes after Prague's High Court decides on his appeal.
Nikulin's defense lawyers have rejected the U.S. charges, saying they are based on one FBI agent, and suggested the U.S. was seeking him for political reasons—to use him as a pawn in the investigation into alleged Russian hacking in the U.S. election.
The alleged hacker claimed in the courtroom Tuesday that he was twice approached by U.S. authorities—in November and in February—in the absence of his previous lawyer. He said they urged him to falsely testify that he was cooperating in the hacking attack on the Democratic National Committee ordered by Russian authorities. He said U.S. authorities would, in exchange, give him money and a life in the United States.
"I rejected doing it," Nikulin said.
The U.S. has accused Russia of coordinating the theft and disclosure of emails from the Democratic National Committee and other institutions and individuals in the U.S. to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Russia has vigorously denied that.
There was no indication that Nikulin's case is connected to the DNC hacking accusation.
https://phys.org/news/2017-05-court-russian-hacker-extradited-russia.html
==
Russian suspected hacker moves step closer to US extradition
FBI accuses Yevgeniy Nikulin of hacking LinkedIn, Formspring and Dropbox, and Russia has also filed extradition request
The arrest of Yevgeniy Nikulin in Prague. Photograph: Police of the Czech Republic
Shaun Walker in Prague
Wednesday 31 May 2017 04.04 AEST
Last modified on Wednesday 31 May 2017 08.10 AEST
A Russian suspected hacker has moved a step closer to being sent to the US as a Czech judge gave tentative approval for an extradition to go ahead, during a court hearing held inside a high-security prison in Prague.
Yevgeniy Nikulin, who was arrested at a restaurant in the Czech capital last October and is accused by the FBI .. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/fbi .. of massive hacks of US companies, appeared at the hearing pale and emaciated after eight months in solitary confinement.
The murky case has so far thrown up far more questions than answers, but one thing is clear: US authorities are determined to extradite the 29-year-old Muscovite, who drove a Lamborghini and socialised with the children of top Russian officials, and Moscow is determined to get him back, filing its own extradition request.
-
Alleged hacker held in Prague at center of 'intense' US-Russia tug of war
Read more > https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/27/us-russia-hacking-yevgeniy-nikulin-linkedin-dropbox
-
The FBI accused Nikulin of responsibility for huge password hacks on LinkedIn, Dropbox and Formspring, in 2012. Nikulin’s arrest last October came three days before the Obama administration officially accused .. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/07/us-russia-dnc-hack-interfering-presidential-election .. Russia of hacking the Democratic National Committee and interfering in the election.
During the election campaign, Trump called on Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails. After the election, he initially dismissed US intelligence agencies’ findings that Russia .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/russia .. had interfered in the electoral process, before eventually grudgingly accepting them.
Nikulin’s lawyers say the case is a set-up. They say Nikulin was not a hacker and that his life revolved around buying and selling luxury cars, as evidenced by a 2015 interview .. https://autorambler.ru/novosti/dorogoy-ty-moy-lamborghini-v-kakuyu-summu-vletit-superkar-i-ego-11-09-2015.htm .. to a Russian automobile website in which he talked about his love for Lamborghinis.
Nikulin took part in street races on the outskirts of Moscow where he would fraternise with the children of Russian oligarchs and politicians. His lawyers say this explains why Nikulin’s Instagram account featured photographs of him with the children of high-ranking officials, including the daughter of the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, one of Putin’s closest confidants. The account was taken offline shortly after Nikulin was arrested.
Nikulin’s Russian lawyer, Vladimir Makeyev, said Nikulin was “useless with computers” and, far from being a super-hacker, was capable of checking his email and no more.
Special agent Jeffrey Miller, of the San Francisco office of the FBI, appears to believe otherwise. A 17-page affidavit by Miller, seen by the Guardian, outlines the evidence against Nikulin to the Czech court. The affidavit lists some of the aliases Nikulin is alleged to have used, including Chinabig01, Eugene, Uarebeenhacked, John Pattison and itBlackHat.
According to Miller’s affidavit, the FBI evidence is based on “witness interviews including confidential sources, ISP records, court-authorised electronic interceptions, and other sources”. Some of the electronic intercepts were emails from the Gmail account of Alexei Belan, a hacker on the FBI wanted list for allegedly conspiring with Russian FSB agents .. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/15/fbi-charges-two-russian-spies-hackers-yahoo-data-breach .. to perpetrate a huge hack on Yahoo in 2014. Belan is on the FBI’s cyber top 10 most wanted list. None of the raw evidence was provided to the court.
The affidavit relates solely to the hacking of LinkedIn .. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/linkedin , Dropbox and Formspring in 2012, and does not mention any election hacking.
However, Nikulin wrote in a letter from prison that Miller had interrogated him in Prague on 7 February and raised the election hacking. Excerpts of the letter were provided to the Guardian by Nikulin’s lawyers, but there is no way of substantiating the claims he made.
Nikulin claimed Miller demanded he admit to hacking the DNC servers as part of what the FBI is said to have claimed was a nefarious plot ultimately ordered by Trump, and promised him good treatment in the US if he cooperated. Nikulin wrote that he rejected the offer.
A document among the court papers detailing the interrogation on 7 February confirms Miller and assistant US attorney Michelle J Kane were present in person along with four Czech intelligence officials identified only by their initials.
The document states that Nikulin was read his rights, insisted he was not guilty of the charges, and that the interrogation was concluded after just 29 minutes.
Nikulin’s lawyer suggested the record of the interrogation was incomplete and that his client had fallen victim to an FBI plot. “Do you really imagine that a high-ranking FBI agent is going to travel all the way from San Francisco just to read this guy his rights?”
Others close to the case dismissed the idea of an overarching conspiracy, but conceded there were many unusual elements to the case.
One theory is that the FBI is rounding up Russian hackers in the hope they may know others who were involved in the election hacking. A Russian computer programmer was arrested .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/10/russian-computer-programmer-held-in-spain-under-us-warrant .. in Barcelona in April.
“My guess in both of these cases is that US intelligence has only now started gathering intelligence about Russian hackers and how they work with the security services, and they want to use these guys to extract info out of them,” said Andrei Soldatov, a specialist on the Russian security services.
Mark Galeotti, senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations Prague, said the presence of Miller in Prague at least suggested that the case was no ordinary one. “An FBI agent travelling from the US to a third country as part of an extradition request is extremely unusual and highlights that the case is seen as significant,” he said.
The US embassy in Prague, the Department of Justice and the FBI all refused requests for comment on the case. A number of Czech officials declined to comment or claimed no knowledge, and a source close to Czech intelligence said only a very limited number of people inside the service had been briefed on the details of the case.
According to Miller’s testimony, Nikulin crossed into the Schengen zone at the Belarus-Poland border in a black Mercedes on 1 October. He posted a photograph on Instagram from Warsaw on 3 October, and was arrested while sitting down to dinner with his female travelling companion in Prague’s touristy old town on 5 October.
Immediately afterwards, Russia filed its own extradition request over a minor 2009 electronic theft. Nikulin’s lawyers admit the Russian request is unconvincing, but say he is willing to be extradited to Russia. The request appears to be a thinly veiled attempt to keep Nikulin out of US hands.
Russian journalists have found details of the 2009 case in a legal database, but note that it appears not to have been acted on by authorities, leading to suspicions that Nikulin may have done a deal back then. There are frequent reports that Russian authorities waive criminal charges against hackers in return for cooperation with the security agencies.
Both Russia and the US have reportedly put diplomatic pressure on Prague to have Nikulin extradited. The Czech weekly Respekt cited diplomatic sources suggesting that Russia had informally offered to swap Nikulin for a number of Czech citizens wanted by Prague for financial crimes.
Tuesday’s hearing was held in a tiny room inside the prison, an unprecedented measure which was ostensibly for security reasons but also meant only four journalists could access the room. “In all my 25 years as a lawyer, I don’t remember any cases being tried inside the prison, including serial killers or organised crime cases,” said Martin Sadilek, Nikulin’s Czech lawyer.
Nikulin’s mother, who attended the hearing, declined to comment except to say she was worried that her son “looks like skin and bones” and that she believed the case was political.
The judge Jaroslav Pytloun ruled that the requests from both countries met legal requirements, and Nikulin’s lawyers said they would appeal against only the US extradition. After the appeals process is concluded, the Czech justice minister, Robert Pelikan, will make the final decision on where to send Nikulin.
Informed sources in Prague said he was expected to send him to the US. An aide to Pelikan said the minister could not comment on the case for now.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/30/suspected-russian-hacker-step-closer-to-us-extradition-yevgeniy-nikulin
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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