SoylentNews

Freeman [soylentnews.org] writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/05/ex-ubiquiti-engineer-behind-breathtaking-data-theft-gets-6-year-prison-term/ [arstechnica.com]

An ex-Ubiquiti engineer, Nickolas Sharp, was sentenced [justice.gov] 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 [bloomberg.com]. In a court document [arstechnica.net], 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.

“It was not up to Mr. Sharp to play God in this circumstance,” Failla said.
[...]
Sharp executed his plan, and he might have gotten away with it if not for a "slip-up" [...] While copying approximately 155 data repositories, an Internet outage temporarily disabled his VPN. When Internet service was restored, unbeknownst to Sharp, Ubiquiti logged his home IP address before the VPN tool could turn back on.

Original Submission