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Russia’s Kaspersky Lab employee convicted of high treason to appeal sentence

Ruslan Stoyanov was sentenced to 14 years of imprisonment

Ruslan Stoyanov and Sergei Mikhailov, background, in the courtroom Alexander Avilov/Agency of city news "Moscow"

Ruslan Stoyanov and Sergei Mikhailov, background, in the courtroom

© Alexander Avilov/Agency of city news "Moscow"

MOSCOW, February 26. /TASS/. Former employee of Russia’s Kaspersky Lab Ruslan Stoyanov, sentenced to 14 years of imprisonment for high treason, plans to appeal his sentence, Stoyanov’s attorney Inga Lebedeva informed TASS.

"We will appeal the sentence. The guys think that they have stepped on some toes during their counter-hacking activity," she said.

It is expected that former head of operational control of the Information Security Center of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) Sergei Mikhailov, sentenced for 22 years behind bars, will also appeal the court’s verdict.

The Moscow District Military Court has sentenced the two men on Tuesday. The court also fined Mikhailov to the tune of 400,000 rubles (about $6,130) and Stoyanov to 150,000 rubles (about $2,300).

The court read out only the substantive provisions, as the criminal case is classified. It was reported earlier that according to the investigators, the two men transferred classified information to the US.

According to the Kommersant newspaper, in 2011, FSB colonel Sergei Mikhailov transferred information concerning the case of the former head of international payment services company Chronopay Pavel Vrublevsky, suspected of staging a DDoS attack on the Assist payment system in July 2010, to the FBI. Mikhailov recorded the data on a compact disc and gave it to Kaspersky Lab employee Stoyanov, who attended the 2011 International Conference on Cyber Security in New Denver, Canada, and handed over the disc to Kimberly Zenz, employee of the US data protection company I-Defence, affiliated with the FBI.

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