[BreachExchange] Alleged LinkedIn hacker is stuck between a Trump and a hard face

[Audrey McNeil]

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3003448/alleged-
linkedin-hacker-is-stuck-between-a-trump-and-a-hard-face

Pity alleged LinkedIn hacker Yevgeniy Nikulin. He is currently facing
extradition requests from both the USA and Russia, suggesting that he is
doomed for Putin or Trump style punishment.

Nikulin is suspected of hacking LinkedIn, which is a glue-like social
network for businesses and business people. If you are not on it, someone
has probably still tried to connect you to it. If you are on it, you were
probably hacked when it was. A lot of people were.

Nikulin was eventually pinched for being the apparent kingpin of the hack
in 2016 at a hotel in Prague. He immediately collapsed, put in an ambulance
and arrested anyway. We didn't know his name then, but we knew that the
Czech law people thought that he might have been responsible for the 2012
hack and that he was detained for 12 hours.

It may have been longer than that. A report on the Guardian says that the
country to which he should be extradited is still under discussion.
Actually, it is apparently under hard debate because it is between the
Putin-led Russia and the Trumpeting USA.

It is well known, we assume, that the two countries do not get on for a
number of reasons. Each has been on the international stage version of
Jeremy Kyle to say that they feel the other has been snooping on them and
hacking them, repeatedly.

LinkedIn is a US company, but Nikulin is a Russian citizen, so we can see
why both countries would have an interest, and we can see why they might
choose to argue over something like this.

Russia followed the US extradition request with one of its own. It went
back to 2009 and found a hack that Nikulin may have carried out and cited
this as a reason for interviewing and detaining him. Oh, he might also be a
spy.

Adam Kopecky, Nikulin's Czech lawyer, thinks that it is a political issue
that has caused the Kramer vs Kramer situation. So do we.

"My client and myself think it's a political affair," said Kopecky. "Given
the international situation, when one superpower accuses a citizen of the
other of hacking their computers and then the other superpower accuses the
same citizen of another crime, it's kind of strange."

Given the choice, Nikulin, who is in poor health, would like to return to
Russia as a free man.
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