Fired IT Worker Replaces CEO's Presentation With Porn 316
An anonymous reader writes "52-year-old Walter Powell wanted revenge when he was fired from his position as an IT manager at Baltimore Substance Abuse System Inc. So, he hacked into their systems — installing keyloggers to steal passwords. Then, when his CEO was giving a presentation to the board of directors he replaced the slides with pornographic images. Powell has now been given a 2 year suspended sentence, and 100 hours community service."
Re:Crap like this is what gives IT a bad name (Score:5, Interesting)
And that's the best he could do? Girly pictures during a presentation. What a loser. Probably still lives in his parent's basement.
The story says "porn", but not what kind of porn...
It's human nature (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not an IT thing. Everyone does this.
I was the IT guy for a company that did company restructuring, or failing that, liquidation. If you've ever been to Ohio and you're the right age you'll remember Carpet Barn and Tile House. I was the guy who liquidated their technical assets. That's a fancy way of saying the boss gave me a truck and a map and said "if it's worth more than 2 cents and plugs into something, put it on the truck." So I got to see every single Carpet Barn.
Now to be fair, they closed very suddenly. It was a Thursday. Workers showed up to locked doors. Salesmen had taken down payments from customers the previous day. The money was lost and never refunded, people didn't get their carpet. It was a bad scene.
You should have seen these places.
Workers opened up the doors with bolt cutters and trashed every single outlet. Holes kicked in the walls, refrigerators turned over, coffee pots smashed into copiers. Office furniture beaten into splinters. Carpet rolls thrown everywhere. Every store looked like the scene of a riot.
Unprofessional (Score:5, Interesting)
This guy would have been smarter if he had found another disgruntled employee and waited a while and then framed him. Or could it be that that is what happened, he could have been marked as an obvious target and someone smarter set him up! Whomever did the hacking it was still childish, the equivalent of keying someones car.
I don't own an IT company but I wouldn't want to work with this guy. Very childish. I can't wait until we finally see these clowns plant child porn or evidence of credit card fraud and other serious crime so they can prove what I have said for years about that subject and computer vulnerability. The first being that no content should be illegal no matter how vulgar it is aka 1st amendment (instead use it to track down people and make sure they aren't committing crimes and making content). Second computer systems are insecure and any lay person should discount any digital evidence taken from a persons personal devices (it's just too easy to frame people). Hacking in inherently unprovable unless you actively bug a persons house and computer and can show he manned the keyboard and can be video recorded tying the things they accused him of doing. I say this because even I would be smart enough to rig a persons computer to do things in the background while he was physically at the computer.
As far as law enforcement I am surprised that more people aren't up in arms over the fact that with a simple accusation the police can come in and permanently seize thousands of dollars of computer equipment and all your personal information and just maybe you'll get it back five years later when it's obsolete and only if you managed to actually prove your innocence (not found not guilty). Further they take can take all your backups so you have nothing to restore from. Then they will probably try to strong arm you with the lure of getting your property back. And this is all legal.
Re:Awesome (Score:3, Interesting)
Would you want this guy working for you?
I dunno. He was an IT manager capable of installing software and changing a presentation; that's more IT knowledge than most IT managers have.
Yes, but you are forgetting the flip side: piss him off and you will pay. I wouldn't hire him no matter how desperate I was.
Re:Undid his just deserves. (Score:5, Interesting)
That happens more often than you think, Its actually happened to me twice..once with a telco I worked for where my department was eliminated as a cost saving measure, my department had 16 people when I started, was down to 2 engineers by the time I was let go. Within two weeks they were calling both of us to try and get us to come back, we both refused to come back in a salary position but offered to come back as contractors...shit was bad so they paid up, I spent a total of one month in two cities and made more in that time than I made in 6 months while I was working there.
The second time was two years ago with my own business, a client decided I was too expensive and decided to "go a different direction", the guy they hired was a relative of one of the company's partners and over a holiday break they managed to have their main server go down after a storm. Their new IT guy kept trying to fix the old machine with random parts, turns out he was hiding the fact that he hadn't had a good backup in over a month. I got a call saying they needed my help, I explained that they had ditched me, and that it was a holiday break (my biggest client closes for a week during the holiday season), they said it didn't matter what it cost they just needed their data. I told them I would do it on an hourly basis on the condition that the idiot who was now in charge just stayed out of the way. I billed them at 2.5x my standard rate, I kept backup hardware of all my clients gear on hand and still had the board and raid card that matched their system at home. Got the new machine up and didn't even have to restore anything, fixed the backup problem made a good backup and presented them a nice bill. They offered to "bring me onboard" again, I told them I didn't have time but wished them luck with my replacement.
Roles and Responsibilities (Score:2, Interesting)
We had a similar issue happen in my office once - not replacing a presentation with pornography, but instead, a recently terminated employee (who was misguidedly provided remote access at all) whose role involved managing calendars and appointments for a handful of executives and leaders, created fake, inappropriate appointments with officers and very high ups.
Leadership came down to our offices and asked why this person was allowed to do this after having been let go. Unfortunately, that was the first indication that they had been 'offboarded'. HR never communicated to us.
Whoops.