In a shocking incident, a disgruntled employee wreaked havoc on his former company’s computer systems, causing a loss of approximately S$918,000 (US$678,000). The employee, Kandula Nagaraju, 39, was sentenced to two years and eight months’ jail for unauthorized access to computer material.
His contract with NCS, a company offering information communication and technology services, was terminated in October 2022 due to poor work performance. Despite his termination, Kandula Nagaraju felt he had made significant contributions to the company during his tenure.
After his dismissal, Kandula Nagaraju returned to India. However, his association with NCS did not end there. Between January 6 and 17, 2023, he used his laptop to gain unauthorized access to the company’s Quality Assurance (QA) system, which he had previously managed as part of a 20-member team. This system, consisting of about 180 virtual servers, was used to test new software and programs before their launch.
In February 2023, He found a new job and returned to Singapore. He rented a room with a former NCS colleague and used his Wi-Fi network to access NCS’ system once again. During these unauthorized accesses, he wrote computer scripts to test if they could be used on the system to delete the servers.
In March 2023, He further accessed NCS’ QA system 13 times. On March 18 and 19, he ran a programmed script to delete 180 virtual servers in the system, one at a time. The following day, the NCS team discovered that the servers had been deleted after they found the system inaccessible and their troubleshooting efforts failed.
On April 11, 2023, a police report was made, and several IP addresses uncovered by internal investigations were handed over to the police. His laptop was seized, and the script used to carry out the deletions was found on it. Investigations revealed that he had searched on Google for scripts to delete virtual servers, which he then used to code the script.
Despite being aware that he was not authorized to access the system after his employment with NCS ended, Kandula Nagaraju proceeded with his actions, resulting in a significant loss for NCS. This incident serves as a stark reminder of the potential threats posed by disgruntled employees and underscores the importance of robust cybersecurity measures.
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