According to news reports, David Anthony McIntosh had been living with an IT workmate in May 2008, and the two had planned to be married, McIntosh said in a letter to a Northern Territory court last week. But when his fiancee broke off the engagement, McIntosh got angry.
McIntosh hacked into government servers using his ex-fiancee's password and deleted 10,475 user accounts from the Health Department, hospital, prison, and Supreme Court servers. It took five days, 130 experts, and more than $1.25 million Australian to find the problem and fix it.
"I'm disgusted with myself for what I did," McIntosh said in the letter to the court. "I did not for a second think I would end up in jail." McIntosh also said he was trying to prove there were "security vulnerabilities" in the system.
McIntosh, who has been in jail since May, is a nine-year IT veteran, but now says he plans to retrain as a chef -- the career he left for IT -- when he is released from prison.
He will be sentenced later this week.
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