Welcome Guest. | Log In | Register | Membership Benefits


Topics:   Insider Threat Tech Center : SophosLabs Insights

IT Admin Gets Jail Time For Sabotaging Ex-Employer's Network

Hell hath no fury like an IT support administrator scorned. At least that's the message being heard loud and clear by firms that are finding their networks at risk of attack from former employees.

Jul 16, 2009 | 01:26 AM | 

By Graham Cluley
Dark Reading

Hell hath no fury like an IT support administrator scorned. At least that's the message being heard loud and clear by firms that are finding their networks at risk of attack from former employees.Thirty-year-old Lesmany Nunez has been sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison after being found guilty of breaking into servers at Quantum Technology Partners (QTP) and shutting down its servers. Nunez had been a computer support technician at the Miami-based firm, which provides IT services to companies in Florida, until May 2007. Three months later he was able to breach the company's network security by logging in with an administrator password.

The former employee then changed the passwords of all of the system administrators, shut down the servers, and deleted files that would have made recovery of lost data from backup tapes simpler.

The court heard that Nunez's actions meant QTP and its customers were unable to conduct normal business for almost a week, with costs exceeding $30,000. Ultimately, Nunez was identified as the suspect by tracing activity on the firm's network to his home computer, where additional electronic evidence was uncovered.

The story of Nunez and QTP is just the latest example of an ex-worker accessing his former employer's computer network after he left its employment. Other recent examples include the tale of David Ernest Everett Jr., who, after leaving his employment at a firm that produces integrated solutions for fast-food outlets, sought revenge by breaking into its servers and planting malicious files, which managed to crash operations at 25 different restaurants.

As belts tighten and the credit crunch continues to hit around the world, more and more companies will be making the decision to make staff and contractors redundant. A disaffected employee could create havoc inside your organization, so make sure appropriate security is in place.

The importance of killing off user names and passwords when individuals leave your business can't be emphasized enough - it's all too easy (and sometimes tempting) for people to break back into your system -- either for reasons of revenge, commercial advantage, or to look clever in front of their mates.

Graham Cluley is senior technology consultant at Sophos, and has been working in the computer security field since the early 1990s. When he's not updating his other blog on the Sophos website, you can find him on Twitter at @gcluley. Special to Dark Reading.



Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

Dark Reading encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, Dark Reading moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. Dark Reading further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
Subscribe to RSS



Insider Threat Reports

report How to Prevent an Illicit Data Dump
There are no silver bullets when it comes to protecting company and customer data from loss or theft, but there are technological and procedural systems that will go a long way toward preventing a WikiLeaks-like data dump. Here are some tips and tricks to help protect your organization's most sensitive information.

report Email and Data Loss
Email encryption, rights management, email gateways, and full-on data loss prevention systems can keep corporate data secure. Here's a look at the pros and cons of each, to help you determine what?s best for your business.

report An Insider Threat Reality check
Heightened concern that users could inadvertently expose or leak -- or purposely steal -- an organization's sensitive data has spurred debate over the proper technology and training to protect the crown jewels. In this special retrospective of recent news coverage, Dark Reading takes a look at how organizations are handling the threat -- and what users are really up to.

Other reports from the Insider Threat Tech Center:

Related Content

Protection from Insider Threats
Preventing data misuse by trusted users is the most difficult information protection challenge. Insiders already have full authorization to the data, making traditional IT secure methods in effective. Learn about a more powerful security approach and proven strategies to prevent insider misuse.

Strategies for Protecting Intellectual Property
A company's intellectual property (IP) represents a significant portion of assets and a critical component of competitive differentiation, but the potential value of any IP is directly linked to its limit of acceptable use. Learn how you can put your IP to work within collaborative environments without undue risk and maximize competitive advantages.

Protecting Against WikiLeaks Type Events and the Insider Threat
The sensitive information supplied to WikiLeaks and other social justice websites comes from trusted insiders. Get the answers to the open gaps left in the WikiLeaks story and learn how you can prevent insider threats that are just as detrimental in your organization.

Insider Threat: An Inside Look at a Fortune 100 Company's Prevention Program
The ways and means by which a privileged user can successfully steal proprietary data today is staggering. One venerable company that suffered a devastating incident decided to do something about it. Find out how it built one of the most productive insider threat prevention programs in the Fortune 100.

Protection of Intellectual Property and Trade Secrets across a Global Enterprise
As a designer and manufacturer of industrial technology, this Fortune 50 company knew that securing their intellectual property (IP) and trade secret data was essential. It created a program to identify risks to their IP and trade secrets and soon caught a privileged user attempting to compromise IP. Download this case study to see a real example of intellectual property protection at work.




Featured Webcasts
Featured Whitepapers
Featured Reports