A former Yahoo software engineer pleaded guilty yesterday to hacking into the personal accounts of over 6,000 Yahoo users, in search of sexual images and videos.
Reyes Daniel Ruiz, 34, of Tracy, California, worked for more than ten years for Yahoo!, where he served as a reliability engineer for the company's Yahoo! Mail service, among other roles.
According to court documents, Ruiz used the access to Yahoo!'s internal network that his job provided to crack users' passwords and gain access to their email accounts.
In total, he accessed about 6,000 accounts, most belonging to younger women, including personal friends and work colleagues.