Former Ubiquiti employee charged with hacking, extorting company

Ubiquiti

01/12/2021 22:36

By Brendan Pierson
    Dec 1 (Reuters) - A former employee of New York-based
Ubiquiti Inc  UI.N  was arrested Wednesday on charges of
stealing confidential data from the wireless technology company
and using it to demand nearly $2 million in ransom, federal
prosecutors said.
    Nickolas Sharp, 36, was arrested in Portland, Oregon, where
he lives. He faces an indictment in federal court in Manhattan.
The most serious charge against him, wire fraud, carries a
maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
    Sharp's attorney, Nick Wooldridge, could not immediately be
reached for comment.
    According to the indictment, Sharp in December 2020
repeatedly downloaded gigabytes of confidential data from his
employer, using a virtual private network to mask his location.
In January, he sent a ransom note to the company posing as an
anonymous hacker and demanding 50 Bitcoin, then worth about $1.9
million, in exchange for returning the stolen data and revealing
a purported security vulnerability in the company's systems,
prosecutors said.
    When the company refused, Sharp published some of the stolen
information, according to prosecutors.
    In March, Sharp, posing as an anonymous whistleblower,
falsely told media outlets that the data had been stolen by an
unidentified hacker, according to the indictment. Following the
publication of several news stories about the breach, Ubiquiti's
stock fell about 20%, wiping out about $4 billion of its market
capitalization.

 (Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by David
Gregorio)
 ((Brendan.Pierson@thomsonreuters.com; 646-223-6017 (desk);
646-306-0235 (cell);))