Russian who hacked LinkedIn, Dropbox gets 88-month prison term

A Russian hacker was sentenced to more than seven years in a US prison for stealing the logins of 117 million users of LinkedIn, Dropbox and the defunct social media site Formspring, according to federal prosecutors.

Yevgeniy Nikulin, 32, was convicted in July after a six-day jury trial in San Francisco in what was said to be one of the largest data breaches in US history.

Prosecutors said that while in Moscow, Nikulin hacked into the company’s computers and installed malware on them, which allowed him to control them remotely and download user databases, including encrypted passwords.