A fired developer planted malware in the company’s IT systems — wanted revenge, but got 10 years in prison

Davis Lu, a 55-year-old developer, had been working for Eaton CorporationEaton is an energy management company that provides electrical, hydraulic, and mechanical solutions for a variety of industries. for 12 years and was facing redundancy in 2019 — but he decided he wouldn’t quit so easily and left his management and colleagues with a «parting surprise».

Lou wrote a special Java program that he planted in the company’s IT systems: in fact, it enabled endless update cycles that overloaded Eaton’s servers and eventually led to crashes. After the problem became critical, executives turned to investigators — and they found the code for the aforementioned program on an internal development server in Kentucky. At the same time, Lu had priority access to the server, and his account was used to run the software.

Additionally, the developer created a «kill switch» that automatically blocked his colleagues’ access to their own accounts — on the day he left.

Interestingly, Lu was quite creative with the names of the programs — he named one Hakai («destruction» in Japanese) and the other HunShui (meaning «sleep»).

Further investigation also revealed that on the day he was supposed to return his corporate laptop, someone had attempted to delete some of the encrypted data from it, as well as erase the Linux OS directories and two code projects. A review of the search history revealed requests for advice on deleting data and folders, as well as hiding processes.

У court case it was noted that Lu’s measures led to the disconnection of thousands of Eaton employees and losses of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The jury eventually found the man guilty and sentenced him to up to 10 years in prison.

Source: The Register