The SEC has managed to unite law firms to protest its treatment of cybercrime victims

Date:
Thu, 23 Feb 2023 15:02:46 +0000

Description:
Almost a hundred law firms filed an amicus brief with the court, demanding
the SEC stand down.

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Eighty-three American law firms, employing more than 50,000 attorneys, have filed an official protest backing some of their peers working on an SEC lawsuit.

In the brief, the complainants urged the court to reign in the SEC, claiming its current demands put their associates at law firm Covington & Burling in a lose-lose situation and set a dangerous precedent for the future.

The case concerns a mjaor cybercrime incidient which occured in late 2022 where Chinese state-sponsored hackers known as Hafnium exploited multiple zero-day vulnerabilities found in Microsoft Exchange servers to compromise countless emails and steal data from US-based defense contractors, law firms, and scientists. Among the victims was Covington & Burling, which resulted in the threat actors accessing sensitive data on its clients, including firms regulated by the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC). Deeply troubled

When the SEC found out, it issued a subpoena, demanding the law firm share
the names of SEC-regulated firms whose data was "viewed, copied, modified or exfiltrated during the attack". It also asked for all communications between those firms and their lawyers. When the law firm said no, as the move would breach client-attorney confidentiality, the SEC sued the firm.

Now, 83 law firms have said they are deeply troubled by the lawsuit.

Not only is the SEC demanding the law firm to breach confidentiality (which could result in disbarment) but its also doing so, the filing reads, out of pure curiosity.

"Not only would the SEC breach well-established principles of confidentiality in the service of this fishing expedition, it would turn attorneys into witnesses against their own clients, while offering no guarantees that it
will not disseminate the information to other parts of the government, the press, and the public," the filing said.

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The group asked the court to deny the SECs application.

"This violation of confidentiality is especially troubling given that it re-victimizes the targets of a foreign nation's cyberattack an increasingly common feature of modern life that even the most diligent businesses and governments cannot prevent," the filing reads.

Whats more, should the law firm be forced to comply, that would
"fundamentally change the calculus when law firms consider how to respond to
a cyberattack. They can either fulfill their ethical obligations to their clients" and suffer legal sanctions, or comply and risk disbarment.

"Either outcome imposes a significant and unfair burden on attorneys, they concluded. Check out the best firewalls right now

Via: The Register



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/news/the-sec-has-managed-to-unite-law-firms-to-prote st-its-treatment-of-cybercrime-victims


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