The former Ubiquiti employee accused of downloading gigabytes of confidential data from his employer, attempting to extort the company and vilifying it as a ‘whistleblower’ pleads guilty to various charges.
According to a U.S. Department of Justice notice the defendant, 37-year-old American Nickolas Sharp, pleads guilty to the charge of deliberately damaging a protected computer, to wire fraud and making a false statement to the FBI. The prosecutor expresses confidence that by pleading guilty, Sharp will ‘certainly suffer the consequences of his destructive actions’. Sharp could face up to 35 years in prison. The judge will rule on May 10.
Sharp is accused of being behind the Ubiquiti hack of early 2021 is sitting. He would have had access to the AWS environment that his employer used. The man is said to have copied gigabytes of data via a VPN connection from Surfshark to storage in his own home. He then demanded 50 bitcoin, at the time almost 2.5 million euros, for keeping the theft quiet and revealing the “vulnerability” in Ubiquiti’s systems. When Ubiquiti refused, he put some of the data online. Sharp was also part of the Ubiquiti team that investigated the hack.
Sharps identity allegedly obsolete because his internet went down while downloading the VPN via the VPN connection Ubiquiti data. This exposed his IP address to the AWS agency and that’s how the FBI tracked him down. After a search of his home, Sharp stated that he was not using Surfshark and that someone else must have taken out a subscription with his PayPal account. After the raid, he also posed as whistleblower to news media and claimed that Ubiquiti downplayed the impact of the hack. The resulting reporting would have led to a fall in value of the shares of about 20 percent.
Ubiquiti is best known for its network equipment. This is more expensive than the competition, but is also generally seen as higher quality. In addition to network equipment, the company also makes smart doorbells, surveillance cameras and lighting, for example.
