After an ordeal over whether the defendants could obtain Russian passports, attend depositions in Europe and hand over work files, Google and Litvak’s lawyers traded accusations of lying. In 2022, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote sided with Google. She found in 48-page ruling that the defendants “intentionally withheld information” and “misrepresented their willingness and ability” to disclose it in order to “avoid liability and further profits” from Glupteby. “The record in this case is sufficient to establish a deliberate attempt to defraud the Court,” Cote wrote.
Cote imposed sanctions on Litvak and agreed to pay Google Total $250,000 by 2027 to the settlement. The lawyer also ordered Starovikov and Filippov to pay a combined total of nearly $526,000 to cover Google’s legal fees. Castañeda says Google has received payments from all three.
Litvak tells WIRED that he still disagrees with the judge’s findings and that Russia’s tense relations with the U.S. may have influenced whom the judge trusted. “It’s telling that after I filed a motion for reconsideration, pointing out serious problems with the court’s decision, the court reversed its original decision and sent [the] case to mediation, which ended with me not having to admit to making any mistakes,” he says in an email.
Google’s Castañeda believes the case has had its intended effect: Russian hackers have stopped misusing Google services and closed the market for stolen login credentials, and the number of computers infected with the Glupteba virus has dropped by 78 percent.
Not every case yields measurable results. Defendants in three other Google hacking cases have not responded to the allegations. That led to Google last year winning a default judgment against three people in Pakistan accused of infecting more than 672,000 computers by disguising malware as Google Chrome downloads. Unrivaled victories are also expected in remaining cases, including one in which foreign application developers allegedly stole money through counterfeit investment apps and were sued for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines.
Royal Hansen, Google’s vice president of privacy, security, and engineering, says lawsuits that don’t result in defendants paying or agreeing to stop alleged abuse can still make life challenging for alleged perpetrators. Google is using the rulings as evidence to convince companies like banks and cloud providers to cut off defendants. Other hackers may be reluctant to work with them, knowing they’ve been exposed. Defendants may also be more wary of crossing international borders and becoming subject to local government scrutiny. “That’s a win, too,” Hansen says.
More coming soon
Google’s diminutive litigation team now meets about twice a week with other parts of the company to discuss potential lawsuits, considering whether the case could set a helpful precedent that would give Google’s policies additional force or draw attention to an emerging threat.
Team leader Day says that as Google refines its process, filing lawsuits is becoming more affordable. That should lead to more lawsuits each year, including some potentially filed outside the U.S. for the first time or representing specific users who have been harmed, he says.
The tech giants’ expanding empires have left no shortage of fresh cases to try. Google’s sister company Waymo recently took an affirmative action approach, suing two people who allegedly crashed and slashed its self-driving taxis. Microsoft, meanwhile, is considering cases against people who operate its generative AI technology for malicious or fraudulent purposes, says Steven Masada, deputy general counsel for the company’s Digital Crimes Unit.
The question remains whether the increasing number of lawsuits has deterred cybercriminals and whether more internet companies will decide to take criminal legal action.
Erin Bernstein, who runs the law firm Bradley Bernstein Sands, which helps governments prosecute civil lawsuits, says she recently pitched several companies in various industries to pursue their own lawsuits. Although none have accepted her offer, she is bullish. “This is going to be a growing area,” Bernstein says.
But Google’s DeLaine Prado hopes that positive lawsuits will eventually ponderous down. “In an ideal world, this job would eventually disappear if it were successful,” she says. “I actually want to make sure that our success makes us almost obsolete, at least as far as this type of work goes.”