Treason Ilya Sachkov will not see a century of hackers
The Moscow City Court sentenced the founder of Group-IB to 14 years in prison Ilya Sachkovhaving found him guilty of high treason, a TASS correspondent reports from the courtroom.
Ilya SachkovAdvocate Sergei Afanasiev said the defense would appeal the verdict. “We do not agree with the verdict and, of course, we will appeal against it,” he said. According to a TASS correspondent from the courtroom, the defendant smiled and posed for the cameras of journalists.
The defense of the founder of the FACCT company will appeal to the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin about the verdict, the press service of the company said.
The company emphasized that despite the detention, Ilya Sachkov continues to work on cybersecurity projects and technologies. “And, according to him, he will continue this work, wherever he is,” the company said. All divisions of FACCT are working normally, the press service of the company added.
In the operative part of Sachkov’s verdict, the plot of the case was not voiced, but it followed from it that there were such physical evidence as various technical devices, in particular, a mobile phone and a laptop, as well as business cards of employees of the US and British embassies in the Russian Federation.
According to investigators, the businessman passed abroad information containing state secrets. Officially, the plot of the case, however, was not reported. Sachkov’s defense stated that the claims that arose against him were not related to the activities of Group-IB. Bloomberg, citing sources, wrote that Sachkov could have transferred to the United States data on the Fancy Bear hacker group, which is associated with the Russian military.
Formerly prosecutor requested The court sentenced him to 18 years in prison. Sachkov has been in custody since September 2021. According to the prosecution, in 2011, the founder of a company that deals with information security and protection against cyber attacks, passed secret information to representatives of foreign intelligence, causing reputational damage to Russia’s national interests.
He does not admit guilt. The case was considered behind closed doors, as it contains classified materials. According to media reports, testimony against Sachkov during the investigation was given by the former head of the 2nd department of the FSB Information Security Center, previously convicted of treason. Sergei Mikhailov. According to his testimony, he gave Sachkov a number of important documents, which later ended up in the hands of the American FBI.
In 2016, Sachkov was included in the list of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world under the age of 30 according to Forbes. He is an Associate Professor at the Department of Information Security at Moscow State Technical University named after N. E. Bauman, was a member of the expert committees of the State Duma and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.
Sources also linked Sachkov’s arrest to cryptolockers, malware that encrypts data on the victim’s computer and demands a ransom for decryption. There was a version that the case against Sachkov appeared after the transfer of information to the United States about the involvement of Russian hackers in interfering in the election of the American president in 2016. A year before his arrest, Ilya Sachkov recorded a video, in which he assumed that he would be assassinated or arrested. RBC’s source in the information security market reported that Sachkov thought he would be poisoned and noticed that he was being followed more than once. In his last months at liberty, he spoke “and about the accusation of treason, among other things.”
