A contractor who tried to extort Siemens-owned Brightly Software after stealing corporate and employee data has been sentenced to two years in prison. Cameron Nicholas Curry, 27, of Charlotte, North Carolina, pleaded guilty in March to six counts of extortion in connection with the late 2023 attack.
Curry worked as a data analyst contractor from August to December 2023 and used his network access to remove sensitive information, including payroll and compensation records, before his contract ended. He then sent more than 60 threatening emails to employees and executives, demanding a ransom not to leak or destroy the data and framing the attack as a salary transparency campaign.
Emails included screenshots of spreadsheets listing employee personally identifiable information. The SEC was also on Curry’s threat list: he warned he would report the breach under rules that require public companies to disclose cyberattacks quickly. Brightly notified the FBI on December 14, 2023 and eventually paid $7,540.92, less than 1% of the roughly $2.5M demand, in late January 2024.
Prosecutors said the case illustrates the risks of giving contractors access to sensitive data on company-owned laptops. The Justice Department announced the sentence Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina.
