Former Yahoo Employee Pleads Guilty for Hacking into 6,000 Yahoo accounts in Search for Private Images

Former Yahoo employee pleads guilty for hacking into 6,000 Yahoo users accounts in search of personal records such as private images and videos of account holders.

Reyes Daniel Ruiz admitted in federal court in San Jose for hacking Yahoo accounts, he cracked user passwords and accessed Yahoo internal systems to compromise the Yahoo accounts.

He targeted the email accounts of a young woman, including his personal friends and work colleagues. Ruiz copies the images found in the personal account without their permission and stored the data at this home,” reads plea agreement.

By having access to the Yahoo accounts he managed to get access to the users iCloud, Facebook, Gmail, DropBox and other online accounts in search of private images and videos.

He did this by requesting the password reset on those sites and the password reset emails received on the compromised Yahoo accounts. By having two-factor authentication these types of attacks can be avoided.

Once Ruiz’s employer Yahoo detected the suspicious activity, he admitted that he destroyed the computer that the data were stored.

The 34-year-old Ruiz was charged one count of Computer Intrusion and one count of Interception of a Wire Communication. He may get five years imprisonment and a restitution fine of $250,000.

Now he is released following the $200,000 bond and his plea was scheduled for February 3, 2020, in front of Honorable Edward J. Davila, U.S. District Court Judge, in San Jose.

It is important to protect the data against insider threats, employes acting maliciously toward the company is risky, the organization should put the right precautions in place.

Based on his Linkedin profile the former Yahoo employee Reyes Daniel Ruiz worked at Okta, Inc between October 2018 to July 2019. Ruiz was charged in April, after that the company investigated and fired him.

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