An ex-employee of Wand Corporation has pleaded guilty to charges of sabotaging the company’s computer system after being fired.
David Ernest Everett Jr. admitted to damaging a protected computer at his former company, Wand Corporation intentionally. He had been working for about eight months on the company’s helpdesk.
In a federal court, Everett Jr. admitted to launching a ‘malicious software attack’ on the computer system of Wand Corporation’s clients about three weeks after his contract was terminated. He also admitted to creating 3 malicious files designed to crash computer servers from his home.
Everett Jr. was able to install the malicious files on 1000 servers that led to server crashes at 25 fast food restaurants in April 2008.
According to Wand Corporation, had all 1000 computer systems crashed, the company would have suffered estimated damage of $4.5 million. The total cost of investigating and fixing the problem caused by Everett Jr. cost Wand Corporation approximately $49,000.
Most people, when they leave their jobs do not think of hacking into their previous company and causing havoc. There are however some unscrupulous people in the world. Therefore, it is necessary to have a disaster recovery plan and only allow authorised personnel access to sensitive information.
