Employee Stole 'Yandex Search Engine' Source Code, Tried to Sell it for Just $29K


yandex-source-code
A former employee of Russian search engine Yandex allegedly stole the source code and key algorithms for its search engine site and then attempted to sell them on the black market to fund his own startup.
Russian publication Kommersant reports that Dmitry Korobov downloaded a type of software nicknamed "Arcadia" from Yandex's servers, which contained highly critical information, including the source code and some of the "key algorithms," of its search engine.
Korobov then tried to sell the stolen codes to an electronics retailer called NIX, where a friend of his allegedly worked, and on the dark underground market in search of potential buyers.

But What's the Punchline?

The funniest part is that Korobov requested only $25,000 and 250,000 rubles (a total of almost $29,000) for Yandex's source code and algorithms, which actually cost "Billions of Rubles," or somewhere near $15 Million USD.
However, Korobov was arrested by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) before any transaction could take place.
If he had been succeeded, the code of Yandex's core service was floating freely over the Internet, resulting in serious consequences for the company.

The report noted that Korobov's court hearing took place earlier this month, and he received a suspended sentence of 2 years in jail after being accused of illegal possession as well as the distribution of commercial secrets.
The Arcadia software "is a key part of [the] company, it was related directly to Yandex's search engine, which is the [primary] source of the company's income," a Yandex representative said in court.
Yandex is the most popular search engine in Russia and is a big rival of Google. Its market share in November reached around 57 percent of all search queries within Russia, compared to Google's 35.2 percent.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
Beware! Built-in Keylogger Discovered In Several HP Laptop Models Do you own a Hewlett-Packard (HP) laptop? Yes? Just stop whatever you are doing and listen carefully: Your HP laptop may be silently recording everything you are typing on your keyboard. While examining Windows Active Domain infrastructures, security researchers from the Switzerland-based security firm Modzero have  discovered  a built-in keylogger in an HP audio driver that spy on your all keystrokes. In general,  Keylogger  is a program that records every keystroke by monitoring every key you have pressed on your keyboard. Usually, malware and trojans use this ability to steal your account information, credit card numbers, passwords, and other private data. HP computers come with Audio Chips developed by Conexant, a manufacturer of integrated circuits, who also develops drivers for its audio chips. Dubbed Conexant High-Definition (HD) Audio Driver, the driver helps the software to comm...
Read more

Anthem Data Breach — 6 Things You Need To Know

Image
Anthem Data Breach — 6 Things You Need To Know The Nation’s second largest  Health insurer company, Anthem , alerted its customers on Wednesday that hackers had stolen the personal information of over 80 Millions of its customers, making it the largest data breach and double the number of payment cards affected by  Target data breach  occurred in 2013. The stolen personal information includes residential addresses, birthdays, medical identification numbers, Social Security Numbers, email addresses and some income data belonging to both current and former customers and employees, including its own chief executive. 80 Million is a vast number — it's roughly the populations of California, Texas and Illinois when combined together. So far, there is no evidence whether financial or medical information of the company’s customers was compromised, according to a statement given by Anthem’s vice president, Kristin Binns. The health giant, based in Indianapol...
Read more
Image
Chrome Flaw Allows Sites to Secretly Record Audio/Video Without Indication What if your laptop is listening to everything that is being said during your phone calls or other people near your laptop and even recording video of your surrounding without your knowledge? Sounds really scary! Isn't it? But this scenario is not only possible but is hell easy to accomplish. A UX design flaw in the Google's Chrome browser could allow malicious websites to record audio or video without alerting the user or giving any visual indication that the user is being spied on. AOL developer Ran Bar-Zik  reported  the vulnerability to Google on April 10, 2017, but the tech giant declined to consider this vulnerability a valid security issue, which means that there is no official patch on the way. How Browsers Works With Camera & Microphone Before jumping onto vulnerability details, you first need to know that web browser based audio-video communication relies on WebR...
Read more