FBI arrests Russian man accused of hacking into LinkedIn in 2012

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (KGO) -- The FBI arrested a Russian man wanted for criminal hacking attacks on U.S. targets. The most well-known occurred in 2012 and the corporation hacked was Mountain View-based LinkedIn.

The man identified by the FBI as Yevgeniy Nikulin was having dinner in a restaurant in Prague, the capital city of the Czech Republic. Agents arrested him without incident. The Russian national is accused of hacking into LinkedIn's servers back in 2012 and may have compromised the credentials of 100 million users. That information consisting of user names and passwords may have been sold to other hackers.

Seth Rosenblatt is with Parallax, a security news website. "It can be something as benign as creating identities for other people, but that can then lead to identity theft, which is not benign at all," said Seth Rosenblatt.

LinkedIn issued a response to the arrest."We are thankful for the hard work and dedication of the FBI in its efforts to locate and capture the parties believed to be responsible for this criminal activity."

California Attorney General Kamala Harris was influential in creating the California Cyber Crime Center.

Speaking at a school in San Francisco, Harris said she's very concerned about what hackers could do beyond attacking corporations, like going after essential grids.

"Like hospitals, power grids, electricity, that's very real. It can debilitate us as a country," Harris said.

The U.S. government has accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against the Democratic party ahead of the presidential election.

"It appears at this point that the FBI is not connecting this suspect to the persons or people who hacked into the Democratic National Committee, or the Hillary Clinton servers," Rosenblatt said.

The U.S. is requesting to extradite the Russian national, but Russia said it will fight any attempt to do so.