The U.S. Department of Justice has indicted Russian national Yevgeniy Nikulin in several major cybercriminal offenses, such as stealing personal identities, usernames and credit card information of customers from Formspring, LinkedIn and Dropbox, Computing.co.uk reported.
Nikita Kislitsin, an employee of cybersecurity firm Group-IB, which has offices in Moscow and Singapore, is an alleged co-conspirator in the Formspring 2012 case, according to the DOJ. Kislitsin joined the company in January 2013, about six months after the U.S. prosecutors say Kislitsin tried to sell the Formspring data. U.S. prosecutors have not alleged any wrongdoing by Group-IB.
Russian software firms are under scrutiny too after leading global anti-virus software firm Kaspersky Lab was cooperating with the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) – a claim the company has stringently denied.
Group-IB is another leading Russian cyber-security firm that also has an international clientele. However, the company dismissed the charges against Kislitsin in a statement as “only allegations”, arguing that no case has been made yet.
Indeed, Group-IB said that company representatives and Kislitsin met with representatives of the Justice Department to discuss Kislitsin research into hackers and the dark web that he conducted before joining Group-IB, while editor of the magazine “Hacker”.
From 2006 to 2012, Kislitsin was a famous journalist and as chief editor of Hacker wrote extensively about information security, programming, and computer network administration. The magazine paid particular attention to research into cyberattacks, analysis of cybercriminal groups’ tools, case studies of online fraud and hacking, and recommendations on cybersecurity measures and protection against cyber-threats. Kislitsin has also worked in the U.S. as an independent threat researcher, Group-IB said.
