Court upholds 4,290-euro fine for CSDD vulnerability case

LSM reported that a Vidzeme Regional Court judgment has entered into force, ordering inventor Raimonds Skuruls to pay a 4,290-euro fine for extortion linked to a security vulnerability found in the Road Traffic Safety Directorate’s information technology system, the Supreme Court said.

The Supreme Court decided not to initiate cassation proceedings, concluding that Skuruls’s conduct could not be considered a civil transaction. When demanding payment for discovering a vulnerability in the CSDD authorisation system, he threatened to publish information about the vulnerability in the media if he was not paid, rather than reporting it to CSDD.

Skuruls had asked for 1,000 euros for his work checking the system, but this was assessed as extortion.

The Supreme Court said the arguments in Skuruls’s cassation complaint concerning his innocence were based on his differing assessment of the reliability and sufficiency of the evidence. The court said the complaint in effect expressed dissatisfaction with the conclusions reached by the appellate court and sought to have its decision overturned for factual rather than legal reasons, contrary to the Criminal Procedure Law.

In November 2018, CSDD and the State Police said they had discovered an unauthorised attempt to access the vehicle register and an attempt to extort money. Criminal proceedings were launched over an alleged attempt to disrupt the operation of an information system and an attempt to commit extortion for financial gain. Police detained Skuruls, who was held in a temporary detention facility for several days.

Skuruls is a radio engineer and design engineer who previously received the Valters Capa Award, a prestigious prize from the Latvian Academy of Sciences and the Latvian Patent Office, for an invention.