The developer built a kill switch that was activated when activated. Now he is convicted of criminal damage
At some point, we all fantasize about having our employer’s big and middle fingers outside the door, whether we are as we wish or being pushed away. Well, a 55-year-old Texas man allegedly built an automatic bird foot in the form of a kill switch, which crashed his company's system and locked it in their account when fired. According to the Justice Department, he will now face up to 10 years in prison as he sets his travel line outside the door and will now face up to 10 years in prison.
Situation: Davis Lu, a Houston, Texas resident, started working for a company based in Beachwood, Ohio in November 2007. The Ministry of Justice’s description of the situation.
So Lu uses his newly discovered free time to build a system that destroys the system, which will be disengaged if he is let go – depending on what he has just experienced, which is likely to feel for him. These included planting malware that created an “infinite loop” that removed his colleague's profile files, blocked login attempts and crashed the company's system. The Justice Department said he also created a kill switch that will “lock all users” if activated.
The kill switch named “Isdlenabledinad” of LU is designed to ensure Lu's account is enabled in the company's employees' Active Directory. Assuming it is, everything is fine. However, the day the LU's name was removed from its Active identity, the Kill Switch was launched, which happened on September 9, 2019.
According to the Justice Department, LU's code “affects thousands of corporate users around the world.” In court, Eaton claimed that Lu managed to cause “hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses” of the company, but frankly, it could be satisfactory, although Lu's defense attorneys claimed that Eaton had only suffered about $5,000 in damages on cleveland.com.
Unfortunately for LU, Eaton didn't have too long traced the attack back to him, because they found that malicious code was executed from a software development server that Lu could access and execute on a computer on a user ID using the LU. Lu also removed encrypted files from his company-issued laptop the day he re-transferred, and his internet history apparently included a way to search for “upgrade privileges, hide the process and quickly delete files.”
“Sadly, Davis Lu uses his education, experience and skills to intentionally harm and hinder their employers and their ability to do business safely, and will hinder their thousands of users around the world,” FBI chief Greg Nelsen said in a statement.
Lu faces up to 10 years in prison for “intentional damage to a protected computer”, despite his plan to appeal the court’s ruling.
