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24 July 2017Trademarks

Microsoft seeks permanent injunction against Fancy Bear

A Virginian district court heard Microsoft’s request for a permanent injunction and default judgment against hacking group Strontium late last week.

Strontium, also known as Fancy Bear, is believed to be affiliated with the GRU, Russia’s foreign military intelligence agency, according to cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.

The group is thought to have been behind the attacks on the US Democratic National Committee, the formal governing body for the US Democratic party.

Microsoft sued the group in August last year at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division.

It claimed that Fancy Bear was engaged in breaking into Microsoft accounts and computer networks of Microsoft’s customers and stealing “highly sensitive” information.

According to the claim, Fancy Bear had committed trademark infringement by using command-and-control domain names that ntain Microsoft trademarks, such as microsoftdcccenter.com.

A command-and-control centre is a network server that controls a large network of compromised systems. Hackers use the centre to send and receive commands from and to infected computers.

“Strontium’s use of Microsoft’s trademarks is meant to confuse Microsoft’s customers into opening documents or clicking on links that will result in not only their computers being infected, but will open the door to a major exploit of their networks and theft of their most sensitive information,” said the original claim.

In August 2016, the court entered a temporary restraining order against the hacking group that disabled Fancy Bear’s existing active domains. The court then entered a preliminary injunction disabling the same domains.

But, according to Microsoft, the group ignored the order and put into operation a number of new domains to control Fancy Bear’s infrastructure.

The court then issued an amended preliminary injunction to disable these new domains, but the hacking group ignored the directives, said Microsoft.

This back-and-forth battle continued, with Microsoft filing a request for a default judgment and a permanent injunction at the end of June this year.

On Friday, July 21, Judge Theresa Carroll Buchanan heard the motion. A report and recommendation will follow.

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