A previous staff of American technology business Ubiquiti has been imprisoned for six many years soon after confessing to pretending to be an anonymous hacker and whistleblower to test and extort just about $2m worth of cryptocurrency from the firm.
According to a press release revealed by the US Attorney’s Office environment very last 7 days, Nickolas Sharp, who worked as a senior developer, was arrested for illegally accessing confidential data and attempting to extort 50 Bitcoin from the network technology provider by sending an anonymous email.
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The defendant not only perpetrated the breach but reportedly orchestrated the publication of deceptive news posts about the company’s handling of the incident, in the end main to a decline of around $4 billion in the company’s sector capitalization.
“Nickolas Sharp was paid out close to a quarter million bucks a year to aid keep his employer safe and sound,” said US Attorney Damian Williams, commenting on the information.
“He abused that rely on by stealing a massive sum of sensitive facts, attempting to implicate innocent workers in his attack, extorting his employer for ransom, obstructing legislation enforcement, and spreading wrong information tales that harmed the firm and anybody who invested in the corporation. Sharp now faces really serious penalties for his callous crimes.”
The US Legal professional included that on close to March 24 2021, FBI brokers carried out a research warrant at Sharp’s residence in Portland, Oregon. They efficiently seized several electronic units, including a notebook that Sharp experienced utilized to pilfer Ubiquiti’s details.
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In the course of the research, Sharp intentionally presented multiple wrong statements to the FBI agents. On February 2 2023, Sharp inevitably pleaded guilty to just one rely of transmitting a system to a shielded computer system that intentionally caused harm, 1 depend of wire fraud and a single depend of earning phony statements to the FBI.
Apart from remaining specified a jail sentence, the defendant was also mandated to fork out $1,590,487 in restitution and forfeit any particular property used or intended for use in relation to the crimes dedicated. In addition, Sharp was positioned below a few several years of supervised release.
The sentence arrives a number of months soon after a US man was charged with fraudulently acquiring $110m of cryptocurrency from crypto trade Mango Marketplaces and its consumers.
Some components of this article are sourced from:
www.infosecurity-journal.com