IT Contractor Of The Month

"A former IT worker for the Bank of New York has admitted to stealing personal information of 2,000 employees and using it to steal more than $1m from charity bank accounts, city prosecutors said.

"Adeniyi Adeyemi, 27, used his position as a contract computer technician at the bank's headquarters to steal the personal identifying information of 2,000 employees, most of whom worked in the IT department. Over an eight-year span, he used the information to set up dummy bank accounts in the employees' names and then transfer stolen funds from at least 11 charities throughout the world.

"Adeyemi used publicly available routing numbers for the charities to initiate wire transfers through financial sites such as ETrade and Fidelity and deposit them into the dummy accounts. To better cover his tracks, he then transferred the funds to a second layer of dummy accounts, according to a press release issued by the New York City District Attorney."

From The Register...

Contractor Of The Year

"A 27-year-old Brooklyn man used his job as a computer technician to appropriate the identities of more than 150 employees at the Bank of New York Mellon and steal more than $1.1 million from a wide array of nonprofit groups and other institutions, officials announced on Wednesday.

"The technician, Adeniyi Adeyemi, 27, of Crown Heights, was charged with grand larceny, identity theft, money laundering, scheme to defraud, computer tampering and unlawful possession of personal identification information in a 149-count indictment.

"The fraud started in November 2001 and lasted through April of this year, according to the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, which is prosecuting the case.

"Using his position as a contract employee in the information technology department at Bank of New York Mellon, Mr. Adeyemi stole personal identifying information from dozens of employees, using the information to more than 30 bank and brokerage accounts in their names at E*Trade, Fidelity, Citi, Wachovia and Washington Mutual, Mr. Morgenthau said."

From The New York Times...

Unemployed IT Worker Of The Week

"An IT administrator faces up to five years in prison after he tried to extort money from his former employers by threatening to crash the company’s servers.

"Viktor Savtyrev, 29, pleaded guilty to extortion after he threatened his former employers with computer crashes. He also threatened to enlist Eastern European hackers to launch attacks against his former employer, New York investment firm Third Avenue Management.

"`My comrades for a small fee are able to help me out with bridging the firewall security and carry out data destruction and virus outbreak,` Savtyrev wrote in an e-mail to the company, according to the complaint.

"`I located the names and e-mail addresses of the editors of Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and the Daily News and all of them should be very interested in getting an article about a mutual fund (losing) data because some 'Crazy Russian' (this is the name of the article which I wrote last night), was fired after 5 years of loyal service.`

"Savtyrev was laid off in November but was reportedly upset at the parsimonious nature of his severance package. He told his employers that he wanted more money, better medical coverage and `excellent references,` or he would take action.

"However, Savtyrev made a serious mistake in putting his demands down in an email to directors, who promptly handed it over to the FBI, who arrested him within days."

From vnunet.com...

Unemployed IT Worker Of The Month

"BINGHAMTON, N.Y. (AP) — A gunman opened fire on a room where immigrants were taking a citizenship exam in downtown Binghamton on Friday, killing as many as 13 people before committing suicide, officials said.

"Gov. David Paterson said at a news conference that 12 or 13 people had been killed. The suspected gunman carried identification with the name of 42-year-old Jiverly Voong of nearby Johnson City, N.Y., a law enforcement official said.

"The suspect's body was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound in an office of the American Civic Association building, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly and was talking on condition of anonymity.

"The gunman barricaded the rear door of the building with his car before entering through the front door, firing his weapon, the official said.

"The gunman had recently been let go from IBM in Johnson City, said Rep. Maurice Hinchey, whose district includes Binghamton. The gunman opened fire on a citizenship class, he said."

More at The Macomb Daily...

Another "Study" Jumps On The Anti-IT Bandwagon

"Enterprises increasingly worry that their employees may be more willing to steal data or sell insider knowledge because of the poor economy, according to an annual security survey conducted by KPMG International.

"Sixty-six percent of respondents felt that out-of-work IT staffers would be tempted to join the criminal underground, driven in part by threats to bonuses, job losses and worthless stock options.

"The E-crime Survey 2009, presented at the E-Crime Congress in London on Tuesday, surveyed 307 private companies, government organizations and law enforcement agencies.

"In the survey, KPMG said that fraud committed by managers, employees and customers tripled last year in comparison with 2007, which indicates that the recession will likely only exacerbate those problems..."

More lies at ComputerWorld...

McAfee's Business Partners Are Evil

[See also this post. Is the pot calling the kettle black or does it simply take one to know one? -Hinky]

"Federal law enforcement officials filed bribery charges today against the District of Columbia's acting chief security officer, along with a one-time D.C. government employee who owns an IT outsourcing company that runs offshore operations in India. Both were later arraigned in federal court.

"Arrested this morning was Yusuf Acar, who currently is the District of Columbia's acting chief security officer; police said they found $70,000 in cash in his Washington home. Acar's annual salary is $127,468, according to court documents.

"The second suspect arraigned on bribery charges is Sushil Bansal, CEO and founder of Advanced Integrated Technologies Corp. (AITC), a Washington-based outsourcing vendor that has won a number of contracts from the district's IT department.

"In what the government officials described as the `McAfee Software Scheme,` Bansal's firm submitted a purchase order for 2,000 units of McAfee Foundstone software, which is used to provide automated scanning and vulnerability assessments, for $104,166. McAfee generated a quote for AITC for the purchase of 500 units of the software at $36,845, but AITC, the provider in this case, charged the D.C. government for 2,000 licenses."

Full article at ComputerWorld...

FBI Rounds Up Evil IT Workers In Nation's Capitol

"FBI agents have arrested a District of Columbia government worker and another man while they search the offices of the city's chief technology officer.

"The head of that city office, Vivek Kundra, recently left to take a White House technology post.

"A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because charges had not yet been unsealed, said worker Yusuf Acar was arrested Thursday. Another man, Sushil Bansal, was also arrested. A court appearance is expected later in the day.

"Katherine Schweit, spokeswoman for the FBI's Washington field office, said the search was being conducted as part of an ongoing investigation.

"Schweit declined to give the subject of the investigation, or comment further on the case."

Source: Yahoo!...

Microsoft Jumps On "Evil Unemployed IT Worker" Bandwagon

"The world's biggest software maker has warned companies to expect an increase in `insider` security attacks by disgruntled, laid-off workers.

"Microsoft said so-called `malicious insider` breaches are on the rise and will worsen in the present downturn.

"`With 1.5 million predicted job losses in the US alone, there's an increased risk and exposure to these attacks,` said Microsoft's Doug Leland.

"`This is one of the most significant threats companies face,` he said."

More at BBC News...

H(1B) Bomb Defused at Fannie Mae

"A logic bomb allegedly planted by a former engineer at mortgage finance company Fannie Mae last fall would have decimated all 4,000 servers at the company, causing millions of dollars in damage and shutting down Fannie Mae for a least a week, prosecutors say.

"Unix engineer Rajendrasinh Babubha Makwana, 35, was indicted Tuesday in federal court in Maryland on a single count of computer sabotage for allegedly writing and planting the malicious code on Oct. 24, the day he was fired from his job. The malware had been set to detonate at 9:00 a.m. on Jan. 31, but was instead discovered by another engineer five days after it was planted, according to court records.

"Makwana, an Indian national, was an employee of technology consulting firm OmniTech, but he worked full time on-site at Fannie Mae's massive data center in Urbana, Maryland, for three years."

More at Wired...

IT Loser of the Week

"A former sys admin at Medco Health Solutions, a US prescription management and health information firm, has been jailed for 30 months over a failed attempt to destroy its systems using a `logic bomb` computer virus.

"Yung-Hsun Lin, 51, of Montville, New Jersey, was sentenced this week after earlier pleading guilty to booby-trapping systems at Medco.

"Yung-Hsun was also ordered to pay $81,200 in compensation to his former employer at a hearing before US District Judge Jose Linares, the New Jersey Star-Ledger adds.

"Yung-Hsun had feared he might lose his job after the firm's spin-off from Merck, and set the 'bomb' to go off after his expected departure."

More at The Register...

Evil Unemployed IT Worker of the Week

"Christopher Anthony Lavis, 42, has pleaded not guilty to murder, torture and other charges that trigger a life-without-parole sentence or capital punishment. He is to appear in court in February for a preliminary hearing.

"Investigators believe Lavis repeatedly stabbed his mother, Connie LaSalle, and tortured her with kitchen shears and what prosecutors have described only as a `Roman knife.` LaSalle's body was found wrapped in five blankets in the living room on Sept. 27, two weeks after friends began to worry about her because they couldn't reach her.

"After his arrest, Lavis admitted to Santa Rosa police Detective Mark Mahre that he killed his mother because she didn't want him staying with her any longer, according to court documents....

"Lavis is an unemployed computer technician who had a minor criminal history linked to drug use. He had stayed with his mother off and on for years, friends said...

"Lavis graduated from high school in Santa Rosa and attended classes at Santa Rosa Junior College before earning an associate degree in computer operations from the Computer Learning Center of San Francisco.

"He worked at National Bank of the Redwoods from 1998 to 2004, designing the bank's original Web site and helping troubleshoot computer problems for employees. Later, he worked short stints at several companies, including Kendall-Jackson Wine Estates, Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital and Barclays Global Investors."

The the Press Democrat...

Jailed SF Engineer to Stand Trial

"A judge has ordered a computer engineer to stand trial on tampering charges for allegedly taking over the cyberspace network he designed for the city of San Francisco and refusing to reveal the passwords to access the system.

"After an eight-day preliminary hearing, Superior Court Judge Paul Alvarado ruled Wednesday that prosecutors had produced enough evidence of Terry Childs' probable guilt to hold him for trial on four felony charges of tampering with a computer network, denying other authorized users access to the network and causing more than $200,000 in losses.

"Childs, 44, of Pittsburg has been held in jail since July 13 on $5 million bail. He is scheduled to be arraigned Jan. 13.

"Childs was a network administrator at San Francisco's Department of Telecommunication Information Services, where he worked for five years. The network he created and ran, FiberWAN, allows the city's computers to communicate with each other and handles 60 percent of the city's information, including sensitive law enforcement, payroll and jail booking records.

"Prosecutors said he locked his bosses out of the system, provided bogus passwords and rigged the network to fail during a scheduled power shutdown."

More at SFGate.com...

IT Workers Are Evil

[NOTE: this blog post quotes a study of "office workers", yet the headline specifically fingers "IT ethics". I'm not sure how that follows, but considering the trade press has been demonizing IT workers lately it comes as no surprise that ZDNet would publish garbage like this. -HinkyDink]

"With a major recession in full-swing, someone had to come up with a survey covering the ethics of office workers in three countries. The punch line: a large percentage of folks surveyed would steal confidential company data in the event of layoff rumors. The results are fairly ugly, painting a negative picture of ethics in the workplace.

"Security firm, Cyber-Ark, conducted the survey, called The Global Recession and its Effect on Work Ethics. The company interviewed 600 workers in the US, UK, and the Netherlands.

"When asked how far respondents would go to keep their job, 15 percent of Americans said they would consider blackmailing their boss!"

From ZDNet Blogs...

IT People are Downright SCARY

Fear the database admin, warns security report

"One of the best ways to improve database security is to carefully monitor the very people entrusted to manage them, database administrators (DBAs), a report has concluded.

"Perhaps not surprisingly, the Aberdeen Group study of 120 mostly large companies around the globe found a correlation between adopting a range of database security practices and frequency of data breaches.

"Companies ranked as using ‘best practice' suffered 8 percent fewer incidents of data loss compared to those not adopting such measures, and ended up with 10 percent fewer of a range of audit deficiencies."

Full article at TechWorld...