The office of one of the world’s most popular web servers NGINX located in Moscow has been raided by Russian Police. Several media report indicate that the authorities have also detained several of the employees, including two of the co-founders of the company.
The news came as a surprise to many experts as NGINX is seen as one of the primary contenders to Apache which is the most popular web server used to power up sites on the Internet.
NGINX Moscow Office Raided, Company Co-Founders Detained After the Operation
News broke about a Russian Police operation that raided the Moscow head office of NGINX, a popular web server software which is used to power a significant number of web sites on the Internet. The reason for this appears to be a copyright infringement complaint which was issued by Rambler, the Russian Internet giant. The company behind the software was founded in the early 2000s. Widespread adoption began later as in 2004 the project was released under an open-source license. Later in 2015 the company was acquired by the American giant F5 Technology.
The reason for the complaint filed by Rambler is that Igor Sysoev who is one of the company co-founders was working for Rambler when he developed the initial version of NGINX. We remind our readers that in many labor contracts for software developers there is a clause that all work done during company employment is owned by the employer. At the time of the initial release of NGINX Sysoev was working for the company as a system administrator. The company has interpreted this as enough reason to alert the authorities. The claim was viewed as valid and the raid was conducted.
Rambler also state that Sysoev was working on the program during work hours and that it was distributed illegally. The Internet giant has even calculated losses totaling 51.4 million Rubles. A court case has been filled under Artile 146 (3) of Russia’s Criminal Code. NGINX has still not issued a press release giving details about the raid.
Martin Beltov
Martin graduated with a degree in Publishing from Sofia University. As a cyber security enthusiast he enjoys writing about the latest threats and mechanisms of intrusion.
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