Russia accuses Turkey of "protecting" ISIS
The war of words between Russia and Turkey escalated yesterday after the shooting down of a Russian fighter jet that 'invaded' Turkish airspace for a number of 17 second intervals. As confirmation comes through that the second pilot is now back safely in Russian hands, Russian Prime Minister Medvedev stated baldly that "Turkey's actions are de facto protection of Islamic State." The pilot has apparently claimed that no warning had been received prior to the air-to-air missile being fired. While it is unlikely that the incident will have any lasting impact on the Syrian conflict, it has served to publicise what many commentators see as the duplicity of Turkey’s stance regarding ISIS. President Obama has said that the Russian version of the events was not entirely truthful.

See related Hacking Team fallout: Cyprus’ head of intelligence falls on sword, company tout new system A hacker known as “mr.grey” has been linked, via a Russian email address, to a staggering 1.2 billion stolen internet credentials, the FBI has revealed in court documents.

Reuters has reported that information on the hacker came after US officials got a tip last year from Hold Security, a cyber security firm, which uncovered that a Russian hacking group going by the name of CyberVor was responsible for breaching 1.2 billion login details along with over 500 million email addresses.

An FBI investigation was subsequently launched, and authorities were able to find lists of utilities and domain names used to send spam. Amongst the spam utilities was an email address, registered in 2010, for a certain “mistergrey”. A search of Russian hacking forums then led the FBI to a user called “mr.grey”, who posted in 2011 touting account info for Facebook, Twitter and the Russian social network, VK.

Hold Security’s chief information security officer, Alex Holden, told Reuters that he believes the 2011 message proves the hacker, or group of hackers, has access to a large database of stolen data. Facebook, Twitter, the FBI and the US Justice Department have all declined to comment. We’ll, of course, bring you more information when it becomes available.

News of the hacker comes in the wake of a series of high-profile data breaches. In October, information relating to 15 million T-Mobile users was leaked, in July a breach of affair-dating site Ashley Madison left 37 millions account compromised and, prior to this, an attack on the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) left the personal information of 21.5 million people at risk.

Next: Read about the fallout of the recent TalkTalk hack.