A Russian man accused of high-profile cyberattacks on Nasdaq, Dow Jones, Heartland Payment Systems and 7-Eleven has been extradited to the U.S. and appeared in court in Newark, New Jersey, Tuesday.
Vladimir Drinkman, 34, of Syktyykar and Moscow, Russia, was charged for his alleged role in a data theft conspiracy that targeted major corporate networks and stole more than 160 million credit card numbers, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a press release. Drinkman was arrested in the Netherlands in June 2012 and had been detained there.
Drinkman was one of five people from Russia or the Ukraine indicted in July 2013 for allegedly conspiring to penetrate the computer networks of several of the largest payment processing companies, retailers and financial institutions in the world, the DOJ said.
The hackers often gained initial entry through an SQL injection attack, the DOJ said. They then placed malware into the compromised networks that gave them backdoor access. In some cases, the defendants lost access to a system due to companies’ security efforts, but were allegedly able to regain it through persistent attacks.
