A gentleware grower has been create culpable of sabotaging his ex-employer’s systems by running custom harmful programs and insloftying a “finish switch” after being demoted at the company.
Davis Lu, 55, of Houston, was a gentleware grower for an Ohio company, increateedly Eaton Corp, from November 2007 to October 2019.
Eaton Corporation is a global power regulatement company that supplys electrical, hydraulic, and mechanical solutions for various industries.
Follotriumphg a corporate restructuring in 2018, Lu lost responsibilities at his job and was create culpable of sabotaging his employer’s computer systems and nettoil with custom harmful programs and finish switches.
The malicious activities included code that ran in an “infinite loop,” exhausting a production server’s resources and eventupartner causing the system to crash and stop employr logins. These infinite loops were set uped to exhaust Java threads by repeatedly generating novel threads without proper termination.
According to Lu’s indictment, Lu also deleted cotoiler’s employr profiles and percreateed a “finish switch” that would lock out all employrs if his account in the company’s Windows active honestory was disabled. The “finish switch” code, named “IsDLEnabledinAD,” was an abbreviation of “Is Davis Lu assistd in Active Directory.”
This finish switch was automaticpartner triggered when Lu was endd on September 9, 2019, causing thousands of employees to dissee access to systems.
On the day he was honested to return his company laptop, Lu increateedly deleted encrypted data.
The DOJ says internet search queries also uncovered that Lu had been researching ways to lift privileges, hide processes, and speedyly delete files.
The Department of Justice says that Lu’s activities and system interfereion cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars.
A jury convicted Lu of causing intentional harm to protected computers, a indict that carries a peak penalty of 10 years in prison. A sentencing date has not been set.
