Gabriel M. Ramsey

Ramsey, a Crowell & Moring LLP partner, represents tech companies and victims of cybercrime as they combat criminal and state-associated hackers. Through technical expertise and the application of federal hacking and trademark statutes and state laws, he has decimated the criminal infrastructure of botnets, handled the fallout of phishing exploits and disrupted ransomware attacks.

Part of his success comes from framing the issues differently. “In a sense, these matters are like any dispute a company faces from a geo-competitor contending for resources,” he said. “Strip away the mystery from an amorphous cybercrime and look at it conceptually as any other contest. These aren’t gods, and there are tools in technology and the law to deal with them.”

Ramsey has represented clients including Microsoft Corp., McAfee Inc EMC Corp. Perfect World Entertainment Inc. NCSoft, Namco Bandai Games, NVIDIA Corp., IGN Entertainment Inc. CNET Networks, eHarmony.com. Say Media, Audible Magic Corp., Affinity Circles Inc. Fox Entertainment Group, Universal Studios, The Walt Disney Co., Lucasfilm Ltd., Digidesign and others.

He worked with British security software and hardware company Sophos Group Ltd. and its Massachusetts affiliate to mitigate attacks on its firewall devices after they were targeted by a threat group. The group intended to install various scripts and executable code that could collect information to stage further attacks via command and control domains. Using federal court processes, Ramsey and his team obtained injunctions transferring control of the attacker’s command infrastructure to his client. Sophos Ltd. v. Does 1-2, 1:20-cv-00502 (E.D. Va., filed May 16, 2020).

Later in May, U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady of Alexandria, Va., transferred control of hundreds of domain names to Sophos, removing the attackers’ infrastructure. “This is a topic discussed in security circles, but companies may not be aware of this option,” Ramsey said.

For Microsoft, Ramsey and colleagues disrupted the “Necuirs” botnet that installed malicious software on millions of victim computers that stole sensitive information from owners. Again, a federal court helped make it happen. Microsoft Corp. v. Does 1-2, 1:20-cv-01217 (E.D. N.Y., filed March 5, 2020).

And he helped a client mitigate a ransomware attack by obtaining a federal court injunction transferring the attackers’ infrastructure to the client. DXC Technology Co. v. Does 1-2, 1:20-cv-00814 (E.D. Va., filed July 20, 2020).

“These cases show we can suppress illegitimate activities,” Ramsey said.

— John Roemer