To punish his employer for his dismissal, a former employee develops software that causes significant material damage. Now the IT engineer faces 10 years in prison. However, he intends to appeal against it.
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A 55-year-old man had been employed at his company for 11 years. However, he had already prepared for a possible dismissal with software that the U.S. Department of Justice referred to as a “kill switch.” After his dismissal, he executed his plan, causing significant material damage to his former employer. This is reported by the English-language magazine PCGamer.com.
A “Kill Switch” Causes Significant Material Damage After the Developer Was Dismissed
What did the developer do? As early as 2018, he began sabotaging his company. After a corporate restructuring reduced his responsibilities, he took this as an opportunity to act against his own company.
The former employee created “infinite loops” that deleted employee profile files, preventing them from logging in, which caused system crashes and affected overall productivity. The software developer named these programs “Hakai,” which means destruction in Japanese, and “HunShui,” the Chinese term for sleep or lethargy.
However, he inflicted the most damage with the “Kill Switch,” which was intended to lock out all users from their computers in the event of his dismissal. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, this code was “automatically activated upon his termination on September 9, 2019, affecting thousands of corporate users worldwide,” allegedly causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages.
When his former colleagues tried to disable this code, they discovered that the software causing the system crashes was running on a computer and a server belonging to the defendant, which only he had access to.
10 Years in Prison, But the Defendant Intends to Appeal
How did the case conclude? The former employee now faces 10 years in prison for the significant material damage caused. However, the defendant intends to appeal against the verdict, his lawyer stated, as they are firmly convinced of his innocence:
Although we are disappointed, we respect the jury’s verdict. He and his supporters believe in his innocence, and this matter will be reviewed in the appellate court.
Others have also creatively sought revenge for a dismissal. After his employer took disciplinary action against him and fired him, a man used his network access to damage the internal IT systems of his former employer. However, he got off relatively lightly, as he received a significantly shorter prison sentence compared to the developer of the “Kill Switch”: A dismissed employee causes around 200,000 Euros in damage because his employer does not directly take away his company laptop
