BakerHostetler (JD Supra Russia)

On May 12, 2017, thousands of companies across the globe saw the first signs of a prolific malware outbreak. The malware, a ransomware variant labeled WannaCry, is capable of encrypting files on a device and moving laterally to encrypt files on associated file shares.

Russia’s Facebook, vKontakte, is under fire for its allegedly poor handling of pervasive copyright infringement on its platform (literally translated from Russian, “v kontakte” means “in contact”). The Association for the Protection of Copyright on the Internet, or AZAPO, has sued vKontakte in Moscow City Court on behalf of author Zahar Prilepin for his book “Resident.”

Back in July, President Vladimir Putin signed a law (Federal Law No. 242-FZ) that compels “data operators” to store Russian citizens’ personal data only inside Russia. Previously, Russian law allowed the storage of data relating to Russian citizens to be located on servers in foreign countries.

Last week it was reported that a small group of Russian computer hackers illegally obtained an unprecedented quantity of internet credentials, including 1.2 billion username and password combinations, and over 500 million unique email addresses. The compromised companies have not yet been identified, but it is believed that the information came from over 420,000 websites.

On August 6, the U.S. Department of Commerce (the “Commerce Department”) issued new regulations, implementing additional sanctions against Russia and introducing new restrictions on exports for its energy sector. These new regulations closely follow recently-imposed sanctions promulgated by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”), which prohibit the issuance of new...