An IT contractor who carried out a retaliatory cyber-attack after being fired for underperforming has been despatched to jail.
Indian nationwide Deepanshu Kher was employed by an American IT consulting agency in 2017. The agency despatched Kher to the headquarters of an organization in Carlsbad, California, to help the enterprise with its migration to a Microsoft Workplace 365 (MS O365) surroundings.
The corporate was sad with the usual of Kher’s work and wasted no time in reporting their dissatisfaction to his employer. In January 2018, Kher was faraway from the Carlsbad firm’s headquarters, and on Could 4, he was fired from his place on the IT consulting agency.
A month after dropping his job, Kher moved to Delhi, India, from the place he took his revenge. On August 8, 2018, Kher hacked into the server of the Carlsbad firm that had complained about his efficiency and deleted over 1,200 of its 1,500 MS O365 person accounts.
The cyber-attack affected nearly all of the corporate’s staff. Its influence was so critical that the corporate was pressured to close down fully for a interval of two days.
Staff couldn’t entry their e mail, contact lists, assembly calendars, paperwork, company directories, video and audio conferences, and the Digital Groups surroundings they relied on to carry out their jobs.
Prospects, distributors, and customers could not be reached by firm staff, and the staff weren’t in a position to inform purchasers about what was occurring or allow them to know when firm operations could be restored.
Following the assault, the Carlsbad firm repeatedly suffered IT issues for 3 months. Staff did not obtain assembly invitations and cancellations, contact lists needed to be rebuilt from scratch, and entry to folders needed to be restored.
Court docket paperwork document the corporate’s vice chairman of IT stating: “In my 30-plus years as an IT skilled, I’ve by no means been part of a tougher and attempting work state of affairs.”
Kher was arrested when he flew to the USA on January 11, 2021. On March 22, the 32-year-old was sentenced to 2 years in jail and three years’ supervised launched. He was additional ordered to pay $567,084 in restitution to the corporate whose operations he sabotaged.
