Security News > 2020 > July > Former Yahoo! Employee Avoids Jail After Hacking User Accounts
2020-07-06 15:33
A former Yahoo! employee who admitted to hacking into the accounts of thousands of users was sentenced last week to five years of probation.
The man, Reyes Daniel Ruiz, 35, of Tracy, California, pleaded guilty in September 2019 to hacking roughly 6,000 Yahoo! accounts, looking for sexual photos and videos.
To access the victim accounts, he used cracked user passwords, but in some cases he abused internal Yahoo! systems for unauthorized access to accounts.
In his guilty plea, Ruiz admitted to mainly targeting the accounts of younger women, friends, and even colleagues.
Ruiz, who has no criminal history, also admitted to targeting the Facebook, Gmail, iCloud, Dropbox, Hotmail, and other online accounts of victims.