| Title | Microsoft's Secret Weapon in Ongoing Struggle Against Fancy Bear? Trademark Law | |
| Date | Wednesday July 26 2017, @11:03PM | |
| Author | takyon | |
| Topic | ||
| from the threat-group dept. | ||
On Friday, representatives of the notorious hacking entity known as Fancy Bear failed to appear in a federal court in Virginia to defend themselves against a civil lawsuit brought by Microsoft.
As the Daily Beast first reported on Friday, Microsoft has been waging a quiet battle in court against the threat group, which is believed to be affiliated with the GRU, Russia's foreign intelligence agency. For now, the company has managed to seize control of 70 domain names, but it's going after many more.
The idea of the lawsuit, which was filed in August 2016, is to use various federal laws—including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), and American trademark law—as a way to seize command-and-control domain names used by the group, which goes by various monikers, including APT28 and Strontium. Many of the domain names used by Fancy Bear contain Microsoft trademarks, like microsoftinfo365.com and hundreds of others.
In June 2017, Microsoft asked the judge to issue a default judgement in its favor, since the individuals behind Fancy Bear have not made themselves known. According to the Daily Beast, Microsoft and its lawyers have made several attempts to serve the unknown "John Does" via e-mail. According to the Daily Beast, those e-mails have been opened dozens of times and were equipped with a tracking beacon. Microsoft's lawyers have also conveniently posted all the court documents on a public website, inviting the defendants to contact them via postal mail, e-mail, or even fax.
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printed from SoylentNews, Microsoft's Secret Weapon in Ongoing Struggle Against Fancy Bear? Trademark Law on 2024-04-19 04:14:58