A Russian accused through the United States of trafficking in a hacked database of online identifiers will escape U. S. courts after the Russian government said it effectively extradited him.
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Russian prosecutors said Kazakhstan’s government would make the man, Nikita Kislitsin, face fees similar to those for an October 2022 hacking incident at an unidentified company. The Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that the hackers involved in the incident had issued an extortion call for 550,000 rubles, or about $6,000.
Kazakhstan has shown extradition and a government spokesperson responded to Information Security Media Group’s request for comment. Russian state news firm Tass reported that the Kazakh government arrested Kislitsin at Almaty International Airport on June 22 following an Interpol request initiated through the United States.
The case highlights a bitter fight between Washington and Moscow over Russian cybercriminals. Because Russia does not extradite its nationals, the U. S. government relies on a third-country government to arrest accused hackers. Many Russian citizens are familiar with this tactic, but U. S. justice department officials said that even restricting suspects’ movements inside Russia was a victory.
Washington recently extradited and prosecuted several Russian cybercriminals, Vladimir Dunaev, who pleaded guilty to creating the TrickBot malware after being extradited from South Korea in 2021 (see: TrickBot developer pleads guilty in U. S. court). U. S. Homeland
Kislitsin has been facing charges in the U. S. He has been in the U. S. since 2013, when a Nevada grand jury indicted him on four counts of computer hacking. A California grand jury indicted him the following year for negotiating the sale of online credentials illegally received in 2012 from the now-defunct social networking site Formspring, which has a magnet for teen cyberbullying. The government deported Formspring hacker Yevgeniy Nikulin to Russia after he served a seven-year sentence as a criminal in February (see: Russia Gets 7-Year Sentence for Hacking LinkedIn and Dropbox).
Kislitsin is an executive at F. A. C. C. T. , a Moscow-based spin-off of cybersecurity firm Group-IB, which finalized its move from Russia to Singapore in April. Kislitsin was previously head of network security at IB-Group, and joined the company at a time after spending six years editing “Hacker,” a monthly Russian magazine, IB-Group said in 2020.
IB-Group co-founder Ilya Sachkov was sentenced to 14 years in prison in July on undisclosed charges of treason, which he denies (see: Moscow Court Convicts Former IB-Group Leader of Treason).
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