Technology is the double-edged sword! This proverb has proven right by a former Yahoo engineer who has hacked 6,000 accounts of users. He peeped into the user’s account looking for nude videos and photos.
The pleaded, Reyes Daniel Ruiz, 34, from North California, Tracy, admitted his crime that he has hacked Yahoo user’s account to view intimate images and videos of the victims. According to sources, Ruiz has worked for Yahoo for around a decade. When he was in Yahoo!, he was responsible for many roles including reliability engineer for the said company. Presently, this man works for any tech company providing one sign-on solution for its clients.
According to the Department of Justice in the United States, Ruiz illegally cracked the passwords and username hacking the internal servers of Yahoo for pornography.
The department further added to the statement that the data collected by Ruiz is also used by him in compromising the security of Apple iCloud, Gmail, Dropbox, and Facebook along with many other online accounts.
This guy had reset the passwords with the help of some third-party sites in order to access other related and linked accounts with Yahoo. The report says that the former Yahoo engineer makes use of hacked Yahoo account for accessing many other online services stealing the identity of the users.
Since it was probably easy for him, Ruiz had selected accounts of friends, women, and co-workers for hacking. After digging into the accounts, he copied and store the intimate and private images and videos of users.
When Yahoo traced him, US investigators destroyed all the computer hardware and drives in which he stored the data stolen through hacking.
Yahoo traced him in 2018 and finally, he was charged in the month of April this year, 2019. He has also signed an agreement with the Department of Justice, the U.S. as reported by BBC.
Ruiz is probably sentenced at the beginning of next year, around February 2020. In the United States, as it’s known worldwide, the tenure of imprisonment is 5 years along with a fine of $ 250,000 or 203,000 Pounds.
Well, hacking is the downside of technology, which is dangerous for the privacy of the users availing online services. This is not the first time when such incidents of hacking are happening. Earlier in 2016, Uber’s former forensic investigator was also found guilty for exploiting the data of rides taken by high-profile celebrities, politicians, and dignitaries.
Cyber authorities should take strict actions against such unethical hackers and also frame laws to prevent such incidents to happen in the future.
