The Department of Justice on Friday said that it has charged three people following \u201cone of the largest reported data breaches in U.S. history.\u201d Charges were filed against two Vietnamese citizens and one Canadian, all of whom stole more than a billion e-mail addresses from service providers in the United States, the Department of Justice said. The Vietnamese men lived in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThese men \u2014 operating from Vietnam, the Netherlands, and Canada \u2014 are accused of carrying out the largest data breach of names and email addresses in the history of the Internet,\u201d DOJ Assistant Attorney General Caldwell aid. \u201cThe defendants allegedly made millions of dollars by stealing over a billion email addresses from email service providers. \u00a0This case again demonstrates the resolve of the Department of Justice to bring accused cyber hackers from overseas to face justice in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
The DOJ said the three hackers stole data from at least eight service providers in the United States and then used e-mail platforms employed by the service providers to send spam to billions of e-mail addresses, making upwards of $2 million. The FBI had its nose in the scheme as early as 2012, when the bureau worked with the Secret Service to begin searching for the hackers in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n
An arraignment is set for one of them in in Atlanta today, while another faces sentencing on April 21. One of the men charged, 28-year old Viet Quoc Nguyen, is still on the loose.<\/p>\n
The DOJ said that, despite the charges, the three men still \u201cremain innocent unless and until proven guilty.\u201d<\/p>\n