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      Ransomware group reports victim it breached to SEC regulators

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 17 November - 00:03 · 1 minute

    Ransomware group reports victim it breached to SEC regulators

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    One of the world’s most active ransomware groups has taken an unusual—if not unprecedented—tactic to pressure one of its victims to pay up: reporting the victim to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

    The pressure tactic came to light in a post published on Wednesday on the dark web site run by AlphV, a ransomware crime syndicate that’s been in operation for two years. After first claiming to have breached the network of the publicly traded digital lending company MeridianLink, AlphV officials posted a screenshot of a complaint it said it filed with the SEC through the agency’s website. Under a recently adopted rule that goes into effect next month, publicly traded companies must file an SEC disclosure within four days of learning of a security incident that had a “material” impact on their business.

    “We want to bring to your attention a concerning issue regarding MeridianLink's compliance with the recently adopted cybersecurity incident disclosure rules,” AlphV officials wrote in the complaint. “It has come to our attention that MeridianLink, in light of a significant breach compromising customer data and operational information, has failed to file the requisite disclosure under item 1.05 of form 8-K within the stipulated four business days, as mandated by the new SEC rules.”

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      Ex-Ubiquiti engineer behind “breathtaking” data theft gets 6-year prison term

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 11 May, 2023 - 17:59

    Ex-Ubiquiti engineer behind “breathtaking” data theft gets 6-year prison term

    Enlarge (credit: SOPA Images / Contributor | LightRocket )

    An ex-Ubiquiti engineer, Nickolas Sharp, was sentenced to six years in prison yesterday after pleading guilty in a New York court to stealing tens of gigabytes of confidential data, demanding a $1.9 million ransom from his former employer, and then publishing the data publicly when his demands were refused.

    Sharp had asked for no prison time, telling United States District Judge Katherine Polk Failla that the cyberattack was actually an "unsanctioned security drill" that left Ubiquiti "a safer place for itself and for its clients,” Bloomberg reported . In a court document , Sharp claimed that Ubiquiti CEO Robert Pera had prevented Sharp from "resolving outstanding security issues," and Sharp told the judge that this led to an "idiotic hyperfixation" on fixing those security flaws.

    However, even if that was Sharp's true motivation, Failla did not accept his justification of his crimes, which include wire fraud, intentionally damaging protected computers, and lying to the FBI.

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