FSB suppressed the sale of the Yandex key algorithm

[Детективное агентство. Инициатива. Самара.]

As Kommersant learned, recently in Moscow, a former Yandex employee, Dmitry Korobov, was convicted of having stolen the company’s source code and the algorithms of its main service, Yandex.Search. He tried to sell intellectual property worth several billion rubles for $ 25 thousand and 250 thousand rubles, which he planned to spend on creating his startup, but at the time of the transaction he was arrested by the FSB of Russia in Moscow and the Moscow region. The loss of source code, which Yandex assesses as the “key part of the company,” could have led the search engine to years of litigation, serious reputation costs and a drop in capitalization.

The Tushinsky District Court of Moscow recently reviewed a criminal case against former Yandex employee Dmitry Korobov accused of committing a crime under Part 3 of Art. 183 of the Criminal Code (illegal receipt and disclosure of information constituting a trade secret). According to the indictment read by the prosecutor during the meeting, in March 2015, Dmitry Korobov, while still working at Yandex, “copied from the Yandex server the Arcadia software containing the source code and algorithms for the Yandex search system, in relation to which a trade secret has been established, to a removable storage medium for the purpose of subsequent transfer to third parties. "

A Kommersant source familiar with the investigation claims that the cost of stolen source code and search algorithms was estimated at "billions of rubles, which, in fact, represents a significant part of the value of Yandex, since the search engine is the company's main service." Anastasia Adilova, an employee of the Legal Department at Yandex, stated in court: “This is about software, which is a key part of our company, that is, this software was directly related to the search engine Yandex, which is the main source of revenue for the company, and therefore our management took the incident very seriously. "

Dmitry Korobov took steps to find those who want to buy the source code and algorithms, in particular, he offered them to the company NIKS Enterprise LLC (operates under the NIKS - Computer Supermarket brand) and sent it to the company’s corporate mailbox in confirmation of his intentions and possibility of sale part of the Arcadia software, the indictment says. A Kommersant source adds that Dmitry Korobov was trying to sell stolen intellectual property on the black market: on the darknet and at specialized hacker forums, accessed by Tor, where he attracted the attention of FSB officers. The indictment says that for the stolen intellectual property Dmitry Korobov set the price of $ 25 thousand and 250 thousand rubles, then he told the buyer the date and place of its transfer, and at the appointed time he was detained by the FSB of Russia in Moscow and the Moscow region.

The court found Dmitry Korobov guilty and sentenced him to two years of probation. The Yandex press service declined to comment before the verdict entered into force, the NICS did not respond to Kommersant’s request, Dmitry Korobov did not answer calls. A Kommersant source familiar with the investigation claims that the company NIKS - Computer Supermarket was chosen by Dmitry Korobov as a potential buyer, as his close friend worked in it. "He did not even realize the real value of the stolen intellectual property. He was going to spend the small money that Korobov planned to help out during the transaction to create his startup," the source said.

According to LiveInternet, in November 2015, Yandex occupied 57.2% of the search market in Russia, Google - 35.2%. In addition, in October, the head of the Yandex group of companies, Arkady Volozh, reported that the share of the Yandex search engine reached 7% in the Turkish market. The value of Yandex shares on NASDAQ yesterday was $ 15.92 per share, and the company's capitalization was $ 5.07 billion.

Cisco Internet Security Consultant Alexei Lukatsky said that fragments of the source code responsible for Yandex search results could be of interest to any advertiser or advertising agency. "Knowing the algorithm, they could make sure that their sites always fall in the first lines of search results, which in turn increases the number of potential customers," he says.

Analyst at Raiffeisenbank Sergey Libin adds that the source could be of interest to companies that create their own services for searching for airline tickets, hotels, etc. "Foreign investors would probably react negatively to the" leak "of the code, which could lower Yandex quotes on NASDAQ by a few percentage points, "adds Mr. Libin. At the same time, both experts agree that direct competitors, such as Google, Rambler and others, could hardly be interested in buying the source. "The market is small, it would be very simple to calculate a thief," Mr. Lukatsky says.

There are many examples in the IT industry when software vendors accused each other of using someone else’s source code and technological developments, one of the most famous cases of which is Symantec’s lawsuit against Acronis and Veeam for borrowing product source code and violating some Symantec patents, says Kirill Kerzenbaum, Head of Corporate Sales Support, Kaspersky Lab. "And as this example also shows, such proceedings can last for years and sometimes do not lead to anything regarding the protection of the interests of the plaintiff," he says.

[DLMURL] https://www.kommersant.ru [/ DLMURL]

 

[Матушкин Андрей Николаевич]

Thank!

 

[Плотников Юрий Михайлович]

Thank!

 

[Лада Безопасность]

thanks for the info!

 

[STALKER]

thank

 

[Чередов Алексей]

Thank! But he didn’t ask for much, the damage is billions:?

 

[Николай Николаевич]

Thank.

 

[Хагани]

thank .....

 

[Александра]

Thank!