Former Ubiquiti dev pleads guilty in data theft and extortion case

2023-02-03 01:30

Nickolas Sharp, 36, of Portland Oregon now faces a maximum of 35 years in prison after pleading to one count of transmitting a program to a protected computer that intentionally caused damage, one count of wire fraud, and one count of making false statements to the FBI. "Nickolas Sharp's company entrusted him with confidential information that he exploited and held for ransom. Adding insult to injury, when Sharp wasn't given his ransom demands, he retaliated by causing false news stories to be published about the company which resulted in his company's market capitalization plummeting by over $4 billion," US Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement Thursday.

"Sharp's guilty plea today ensures that he will face the consequences of his destructive actions."

As we previously reported at the time, Sharp was charged in connection with the high-profile Ubiquiti data theft and ransom attempt in late 2021.

Prosecutors accused Sharp - who was working as a cloud lead for the wireless and LAN switching vendor according to his LinkedIn profile - of using his position and administrative access to the company's AWS cloud instances and GitHub repository to exfiltrate gigabytes of data to his home network.

While a team he was working on investigated the breach, prosecutors say Sharp sent a ransom note demanding 50 Bitcoin - worth about $1.9 million at the time - for the return of the data and to identify the backdoor used to acquire it.

When Ubiquiti declined to capitulate to his demands, Sharp leaked some of the data to the public.

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