The Russian authorities at this time handed down a treason conviction and 14-year jail sentence on Iyla Sachkov, the previous founder and CEO of one in every of Russia’s largest cybersecurity companies. Sachkov, 37, has been detained for almost two years below expenses that the Kremlin has saved labeled and hidden from public view, and he joins a rising roster of former Russian cybercrime fighters who at the moment are serving laborious time for farcical treason convictions.
Ilya Sachkov. Image: Group-IB.com.
In 2003, Sachkov based Group-IB, a cybersecurity and digital forensics firm that shortly earned a fame for exposing and disrupting large-scale cybercrime operations, together with fairly a couple of that had been based mostly in Russia and stealing from Russian corporations and residents.
In September 2021, the Kremlin issued treason expenses towards Sachkov, though it has refused to reveal any particulars in regards to the allegations. Sachkov pleaded not responsible. After a three-week “trial” that was closed to the general public, Sachkov was convicted of treason and sentenced to 14 years in jail. Prosecutors had requested for 18 years.
Group-IB relocated its headquarters to Singapore a number of years in the past, though it didn’t totally exit the Russian market till April 2023. In an announcement, Group-IB stated that in their founder’s detainment, he was denied the appropriate to speak — no calls, no letters — with the surface world for the primary few months, and was disadvantaged of any visits from household and pals.
“Ultimately, Ilya has been denied a chance for an impartial trial,” reads a weblog put up on the corporate’s web site. “All the materials of the case are kept classified, and all hearings were held in complete secrecy with no public scrutiny. As a result, we might never know the pretext for his conviction.”
Prior to his arrest in 2021, Sachkov publicly chastised the Kremlin for turning a blind eye to the epidemic of ransomware assaults coming from Russia. In a speech lined by the Financial Times in 2021, Sachkov railed towards the likes of Russian hacker Maksim Yakubets, the accused head of a hacking group referred to as Evil Corp. that U.S. officers say has stolen a whole bunch of tens of millions of {dollars} over the previous decade.
“Yakubets has been spotted driving around Moscow in a fluorescent camouflage Lamborghini, with a custom licence plate that reads ‘THIEF,’” FT’s Max Seddon wrote. “He also ‘provides direct assistance to the Russian government’s malicious cyber efforts,’ according to US Treasury sanctions against him.”
In December 2021, Bloomberg reported that Sachkov was alleged to have given the United States details about the Russian “Fancy Bear” operation that sought to affect the 2016 U.S. election. Fancy Bear is one in every of a number of names (e.g., APT28) for a sophisticated Russian cyber espionage group that has been linked to the Russian army intelligence company GRU.
In 2019, a Moscow courtroom meted out a 22-year jail sentence for alleged treason expenses towards Sergei Mikhailov, previously deputy chief of Russia’s prime anti-cybercrime unit. The courtroom additionally levied a 14-year sentence towards Ruslan Stoyanov, a senior worker at Kaspersky Lab. Both males maintained their innocence all through the trial, and the supposed cause for the treason expenses has by no means been disclosed.
Following their dramatic arrests in 2016, some media shops reported that the lads had been suspected of getting tipped off American intelligence officers about these liable for Russian hacking actions tied to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
That’s as a result of two others arrested for treason on the identical time — Mikhailov subordinates Georgi Fomchenkov and Dmitry Dokuchaev — had been reported by Russian media to have helped the FBI examine Russian servers linked to the 2016 hacking of the Democratic National Committee.