Russian Hacker who Breached JP Morgan Security Appears in U.S. Court

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    A Russian cyber theft specialist accused of hacking JP Morgan, one of the world’s largest bank institutions, appeared before a New York court Monday after he was extradited from the Caucasus nation of Georgia, The New York Post reports.

    The hack, which happened in 2014, is considered the biggest cybersecurity breach in U.S. history.

    Moscow resident Andrei Tyurin, 35, was charged Friday 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.

    In 2014, some 76 million JPMorgan Chase customers were less than thrilled to hear that hackers were roaming around company databases containing their records for two months. But the massive breach was only one of many cybercrimes the Russian has committed, U.S. prosecutors say.

    “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.

    The group of hackers allegedly targeted other firms, including an unnamed Boston-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.