Sacked IT director banged up for revenge hack attack
File deletion leads to new job sewing mailbags
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
An IT director who took revenge on his former employer following his dismissal by hacking its website and deleting files has been jailed for 27 months.
Darnell H Albert-El, 53, of Richmond, Virginia, who admitted the cyber-assault against systems at Transmarx, was also ordered to pay $6,700 in restitution to his former employer, at a sentencing hearing before US District Judge Robert E Payne.
Albert-El responded to losing his job in June 2008 by using his own (still active) admin access login credentials to log into Transmarx's systems and deleting around 1,000 files in a fit of pique a month later in July 2008, local paper the Richmond Times Dispatch reports.
The information was backed up and little damage was done, with Transmarx claiming for losses of just $6,000. Albert-El can therefore consider himself unfortunate at receiving any prison sentence, much less one of this length.
Transmarx sells discounted telecom equipment and supplies. The attack on its systems was investigated by agents from the FBI.
A Justice Department statement on the case can be found here. ®
COMMENTS
AMATEUR!
fancy using his own account!
a true BOFH would have framed up another co-worker
then like Kaiser Sochai, 'puff' he was gone
stupid, to the fourth power
Stupid, on the part of the idiot who made the attack, to use his own account to make the attack.
Stupid, on the part of the idiots in charge at the company, for not having deleted that account before he was out the door.
Stupid, again on the part of the idiot in question as given the time frame of the attack he'd be on the list of suspects.
Stupid, one one time, on the part of the idiot in question as he committed a Federal felony and yet managed to do very little damage. If you're gonna commit Federal felonies, aim high.
Now, if at some time during his stay at the company he had created an admin account in a different name and didn't tell anyone about it, and there were sufficient employees that one more account wouldn't cause comment, now _that_ would have been a hack... and, assuming that he used that account from a machine which could not be traced to him, both not stupid and hard to track. Although he'd still be on the list of suspects 'cause he only waited a month. Wait a year, then corrupt their backups and _then_ delete _all_ the files. Or don't do it at all.
Idiot.
Director, not Admin
Note that this was an IT Director and not a Sysadmin. They made a mistake sacking him, as he clearly knows much more about IT than most IT Directors.
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