IT Worker Arrested At Health Firm

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
The FBI has arrested some nutcase that installed “destructive computer code” on servers at his job because he feared being laid off. The kicker? He worked for a major manager of prescription benefit plans.

The indictment accuses Lin of planting a "logic bomb" sometime around October 2003 that, if activated successfully, would have deleted "virtually all information" on more than 70 HP-Unix servers at Medco Health Solutions and wreaked havoc on the business and its users.
 
"because he feared being laid off"

Who thinks they could keep their job by blackmailing such a large company? Did he expect to be paid off and disappear?
 
If you have mail-order prescriptions as a part of your health plan, chances are even money that Medco is the firm your company's healthcare provider uses, and if you're using them, this could have had a major effect on you.

Between this article and an excerpt from this one (do a text search in your browser for Medco), this makes me really nervous. I just switched to Medco (local prescriptions becoming more expensive in our health plan) and I have real qualms about their IT security policy.

As for the guy who did it, I hope he sees more than a few years in Leavenworth.
 
mashie said:
I think they consider it a "thank you" in case they are made redundant and not an attempt to blackmail anyone.

We joked about doomsday scripts every time it was talk about redundancies where I used to work, however I can't imagine how retarded someone must be to actually try and do it though.
Things like this are much more common than you think. At one of the places I used to work (think of a computer company from hell) we FREQUENTLY found "kill scripts" as we called them on users computers.

Of course.. 80% of them never would have worked in the first place, but that's irrelevant.
 
Back
Top