Tag Archive for: denying

Meet The Super Rich Czech Tech Company — And Its Russian CEO —Denying Links To The Huge SolarWinds Hack


Maxim Shafirov is looking grizzled, grumbling through a stubbled muzzle about having just two hours sleep, hunched over his computer as the snow falls behind him in a window that looks out to a wintry St. Petersburg. The Russian native’s grouchiness is understandable.

Shafirov is the CEO of Czech company JetBrains, which was likely one of the biggest tech companies you’d never heard of, until Wednesday when reports cited government sources saying it was being investigated for links to huge cyberattacks on U.S. government agencies and tech giants, via the hack of another low-profile IT provider, SolarWinds, and scores of its clients, including federal agencies. For millions of coders, the Prague-based business’ tools are invaluable, providing all manner of software to make their app building that much easier. Founded in 2000, it claims over 8 million paying users in over 213 countries. Company revenue for 2019, according to the most recently-available results for the privately-held business, stood at $270 million, with year-on-year growth of 33%. Shafirov, in an upbeat moment in an interview with Forbes, says that despite the Covid-19 pandemic, its revenue growth this last year was 10%, indicating near $300 million for 2020. The business was a so-called “unicorn” worth more than $1 billion, according to a JetBrains spokesperson.

Few outside the tech world would’ve paid the company much attention until reports in the New York Times, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal indicated those investigating what’s become one of the most severe acts of cyber espionage in recent memory were looking at the possibility JetBrains was involved. The reports hint JetBrains, or one of its apps, TeamCity, was hacked, leading to an infiltration at SolarWinds, which, in turn, had one of its own tools compromised and used to hijack customer networks. Amongst the victims are the Department of Justice, which yesterday revealed 3% of its Office 365 emails had been compromised. It joined the Department of Energy, the Treasury, Microsoft,…

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IBM Hong Kong gets more diplomatic about denying report of 100,000 looming layoffs

Yesterday, Impact@IBMHK, “the official IBM Hong Kong blog,” went ballistic on longtime tech pundit Robert Cringley over his reporting that Big Blue stands ready to ax some 100,000 employees in a massive corporate reorg code-named Project Chrome.

Today, under the cover of equally unequivocal but more temperate denials from IBM spokespeople in the U.S., IBM Hong Kong has softened its tone.

Here’s what the IMB Hong Kong blog said yesterday:

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Network World Paul McNamara