Infosec in brief US senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) thinks it's Microsoft's fault that Chinese hackers broke into Exchange Online, and he wants three separate government agencies to launch investigations and hold the Windows giant "responsible for its negligent cyber security practices." …
Federal prosecutors have expanded their criminal case against a famous Floridian and his loyal minions for allegedly mishandling national security secrets and not being forthright about the storage and handling of hundreds of classified documents.…
Personal, financial, and health information belonging to millions of folks has been stolen via a particular class of website vulnerability, say cybersecurity agencies in the US and Australia. They're urging developers to review their code and squish these bugs for good.…
Nearly all of the FBI's technical intelligence on malicious "cyber actors" in the first half of this year was obtained via Section 702 searches, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray.…
Chinese companies, including state-owned defense companies, are evading tech sanctions and fueling Moscow’s war in Ukraine, according to a US report released on Thursday.…
IoT, breaches and largely business as usual so I'll skip that in the intro to this post and jump straight to the end: the impending HIBP domain search changes. As I say in the vid, I really value people's feedback on this so if nothing else, please skip through to 48:15, listen to that section and let me know what you think. By the time I do next week's vid my hope is that all the coding work is done and I'm a couple of days out from shipping it, so now is your time to provide input if you think there's something I'm missing that really should be in there 🙂
NATO is investigating claims by miscreants that they broke into the military alliance's unclassified information-sharing and collaboration IT environment, stole information belonging to 31 nations, and leaked 845 MB of compressed data.…
Accounting giant Deloitte, pizza and birthday party chain Chuck E. Cheese, government contractor Maximus, and the Hallmark Channel are among the latest victims that the Russian ransomware crew Clop claims to have compromised via the MOVEit vulnerability.…
Chinese made AI-enabled products should spark similar concerns to Middle Kingdom sourced 5G equipment and therefore be regulated, said think tank Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) on Thursday.…
Public companies that suffer a computer crime likely to cause a "material" hit to an investor will soon face a four-day time limit to disclose the incident, according to rules approved today by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.…
A Russian court has sentenced Ilya Sachkov, the founder of security research house Group-IB, to 14 years in a maximum-security prison after finding the executive guilty of high treason.…
The Russian government today handed down a treason conviction and 14-year prison sentence on Iyla Sachkov, the former founder and CEO of one of Russia’s largest cybersecurity firms. Sachkov, 37, has been detained for nearly two years under charges that the Kremlin has kept classified and hidden from public view, and he joins a growing roster of former Russian cybercrime fighters who are now serving hard time for farcical treason convictions.
Ilya Sachkov. Image: Group-IB.com.
In 2003, Sachkov founded Group-IB, a cybersecurity and digital forensics company that quickly earned a reputation for exposing and disrupting large-scale cybercrime operations, including quite a few that were based in Russia and stealing from Russian companies and citizens.
In September 2021, the Kremlin issued treason charges against Sachkov, although it has refused to disclose any details about the allegations. Sachkov pleaded not guilty. After a three-week “trial” that was closed to the public, Sachkov was convicted of treason and sentenced to 14 years in prison. Prosecutors had asked for 18 years.
Group-IB relocated its headquarters to Singapore several years ago, although it did not fully exit the Russian market until April 2023. In a statement, Group-IB said that during their founder’s detainment, he was denied the right to communicate — no calls, no letters — with the outside world for the first few months, and was deprived of any visits from family and friends.
“Ultimately, Ilya has been denied a chance for an impartial trial,” reads a blog post on the company’s site. “All the materials of the case are kept classified, and all hearings were held in complete secrecy with no public scrutiny. As a result, we might never know the pretext for his conviction.”
Prior to his arrest in 2021, Sachkov publicly chastised the Kremlin for turning a blind eye to the epidemic of ransomware attacks coming from Russia. In a speech covered by the Financial Times in 2021, Sachkov railed against the likes of Russian hacker Maksim Yakubets, the accused head of a hacking group called Evil Corp. that U.S. officials say has stolen hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade.
“Yakubets has been spotted driving around Moscow in a fluorescent camouflage Lamborghini, with a custom licence plate that reads ‘THIEF,'” FT’s Max Seddon wrote. “He also ‘provides direct assistance to the Russian government’s malicious cyber efforts,’ according to US Treasury sanctions against him.”
In December 2021, Bloomberg reported that Sachkov was alleged to have given the United States information about the Russian “Fancy Bear” operation that sought to influence the 2016 U.S. election. Fancy Bear is one of several names (e.g., APT28) for an advanced Russian cyber espionage group that has been linked to the Russian military intelligence agency GRU.
In 2019, a Moscow court meted out a 22-year prison sentence for alleged treason charges against Sergei Mikhailov, formerly deputy chief of Russia’s top anti-cybercrime unit. The court also levied a 14-year sentence against Ruslan Stoyanov, a senior employee at Kaspersky Lab. Both men maintained their innocence throughout the trial, and the supposed reason for the treason charges has never been disclosed.
Following their dramatic arrests in 2016, some media outlets reported that the men were suspected of having tipped off American intelligence officials about those responsible for Russian hacking activities tied to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
That’s because two others arrested for treason at the same time — Mikhailov subordinates Georgi Fomchenkov and Dmitry Dokuchaev — were reported by Russian media to have helped the FBI investigate Russian servers linked to the 2016 hacking of the Democratic National Committee.