Blackmail Uber, LinkedIn, two hackers received a harsh sentence

The two men bowed to pleading guilty in US federal court on Wednesday after a series of accusations related to hacking and extortion of corporations, including in particular Two big names include Uber and LinkedIn.

According to the US Department of Justice, hackers have requested huge sums of money from the above companies in exchange for the removal of all confidential data they have stolen.

Brandon Charles Glover and Vasile Mereacre admit to being involved in an attempt to illegally access companies' secret databases on Amazon Web Services using information they stole and collected previously. .

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After obtaining the required amount of data, Glover and Mereacre proactively use encrypted email aliases and accounts to contact the victims, noting that they found a flaw in their use. system of company employees, and demonstrate that a large amount of confidential data is in their hands and require companies to transfer money in exchange for the entire data being leaked, status stated.

Glover and Mereacre found an archive of 57 million Uber user profiles created from customer and driver data, then illegally downloaded this data to 'blackmail' Uber in November. in 2016.

According to the defendants' defense arguments, Uber said it would pay $ 100,000 worth of bitcoin through a third party if the defendants agreed to a confidentiality agreement. In addition, the company also requires the payment to be kept confidential and two hackers to completely erase the amount of data they are holding.

After three weeks of negotiations, Uber made a payment in December 2016, but secretly tracked the hackers' identities. In January 2017, Uber found Glover's true identity. A company representative met Glover in person at his home in Florida, and the hacker acknowledged his role in the whole incident and signed a confidentiality agreement with his real name. Two days later, Mereacre's identity was also determined. An Uber representative met this guy in Toronto and made the same request.

On the LinkedIn side, the defendants obtained information on more than 90,000 secret user accounts on Lynda.com that they had accessed and downloaded illegally from the platform's Amazon Web Services account (LinkedIn is a company. mother of Lynda.com). Blackmail is similar to Uber.

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Glover and Mereacre were charged with conspiracy to commit computer blackmail. The two men are likely to face a five-year prison sentence and a fine of up to $ 250,000.