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which were followed by a significant drop in the company’s share price associated with the loss of billions of dollars in its market capitalization."
Mr. Sharp is apparently not so sharp. He carried out the attack from his home network. He connected directly for enough time that his bare IP was logged. The rest of the time, he carried out the attack using a commercially purchased VPN solution that was trivial to trace back to him via the purchase record. He lied to the FBI. (I have yet to understand why people talk to law enforcement instead of staying silent so a…
Guess he should have bought a VPN with cash or stole someone else’s if Mr. Sharp wanted to be more sharp about it.
and to me it looks like somebody intentionally left breadcrumb trail leading to the guy. With cloud paying so nice these days nobody is going to risk that way for the paltry $2M (ie. less than 3-4 years earnings in Bay Area for the people like this). It looks like the stock price drop is the real "follow the money" trailhead, and that doesn't lead to the guy.
And given that it were about Ubiquiti customer databases - the value of [stealth] access to those customers may possibly dwarf those few billions of valuation drop - so even the stock drop may have been a smoke screen. I mean Ubiquiti as a target reminds me of SolarWinds.
Those comments back then is also interestingly predictive https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26692987 - having a fall back guy kind of absolves the company from architectural and operational sins which allowed the hack and pacifies the customers who otherwise would feel unease of being possibly hacked by somebody serious.
Nick had his hands in everything from GitHub to Slack and we could never understand why or how. He rose to power in the company by claiming to find a vulnerability that let him access the CEO's personal system, but nobody I spoke to ever knew what the vulnerability was. I discussed this with another ex-Ubiquiti person in an old thread [1] Now I'm positive he faked the security issue as a power move, just as he faked this attack for extortion purposes.
He would also harass people and use his control over Slack and GitHub against the people he didn't like. Many people left around this time partially because Nick made everything so difficult at the company. What a terribly depressing series of events.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Guess he should have bought a VPN with cash or stole someone else’s if Mr. Sharp wanted to be more sharp about it.
>SHARP falsely stated, in part and substance, that someone else must have used his PayPal account to make the purchase. and to me it looks like somebody intentionally left breadcrumb trail leading to the guy. With cloud paying so nice these days nobody is going to risk that way for the paltry $2M (ie. less than 3-4 years earnings in Bay Area for the people like this). It looks like the stock price drop is the real "f…
Ubiquiti's stock price (NYSE: UI) dropped by over 25% from $380 to $290 during the week following news of its breach. That's almost $5 billion wiped off the company's market capitalisation because of this employee.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/03/whistleblower-ubiquiti-b...
Ex-Ubiquiti employee here. Nick Sharp wasn't just a senior software engineer. He was the Cloud Lead and ran the whole cloud team. His LinkedIn profile will confirm it. This is why he had access to everything. Nick had his hands in everything from GitHub to Slack and we could never understand why or how. He rose to power in the company by claiming to find a vulnerability that let him access the CEO's personal system,…
Ex-Ubiquiti employee here. Nick Sharp wasn't just a senior software engineer. He was the Cloud Lead and ran the whole cloud team. His LinkedIn profile will confirm it. This is why he had access to everything. Nick had his hands in everything from GitHub to Slack and we could never understand why or how. He rose to power in the company by claiming to find a vulnerability that let him access the CEO's personal system,…
Is this why Ubiquiti quality has fallen over the last ~2 years? I went all-in on Ubiquiti almost 3 years ago and I’ve been less than thrilled with the quality and level of support. This chaos that you say happened seems to line up with what I was seeing as a customer but everyone has been shocked at how UI has dropped in terms of quality.
Now... submit a ticket. Frustrating/pointless UI changes. Breaking system upgrades. Backed up your configuration? Doesn't matter, you're going to need to reset this update... disappointing. I still have hope they'll turn it around because they have the best UI of any network gear I've used for getting small/mid size networks up and done.
I've always been fascinated by the idea that intelligence lies within a spectrum. Someone might be incredibly smart about a narrow topic or field, yet be blind to their own stupidity within another realm. To me, this seems like a classic example. To quote the press release: "During the execution of that search, SHARP made numerous false statements to FBI agents, including, among other things, in substance, that he wa…
When faced correcting a false reality you have created, it can be quite hard to decide to phase change into telling the truth. The lies that come out come from not being prepared and not being a very good liar. For people who lie like this, a good way to think about it is as though it were a disease.
Actually intelligent people just don't do things like this, even if they have nefarious intent. There are quite smarter ways to accomplish substantially the same thing that this crime does not reflect.
I'm not convinced that this person was particularly intelligent in the first place.
I've always been fascinated by the idea that intelligence lies within a spectrum. Someone might be incredibly smart about a narrow topic or field, yet be blind to their own stupidity within another realm. To me, this seems like a classic example. To quote the press release: "During the execution of that search, SHARP made numerous false statements to FBI agents, including, among other things, in substance, that he wa…
Tech has a contempt culture problem, and this can be one manifestation of it: feeling that being moderately bright about getting computers to do things makes you a tremendous intellect, and everyone else around you an easily hoodwinked moron.
Perhaps the most extreme example was Hans Reiser. Anyone who followed the twists and turns of the case against him for murdering his wife will remember how many trivially disproved lies he told, apparently under the illusion that he was a mastermind who could put one over on the courts based on his faulty understanding of ideas like reasonable doubt.