News Disgruntled ex-employee costs company over $600,000 after he deletes all 180 of its test servers — found server deletion scripts on Google

[Joseph_138]

His prison sentence needs to be longer, by about 10x. $680,000 in damage warrants a lot longer sentence than what he got.

 

[Joseph_138]

You know what they say about Singapore, right? "It's a FINE city."


This isn't a disparagement of the city, either. They will happily agree to this statement.

Over two years for test servers sounds about right for Singapore.

600k for DELETING (un-allocating and reducing costs) sounds about right.

It's a FINE for unauthorized access. TWO AND HALF YEARS FOR A WHITE COLLAR CRIME.

You wouldn't be saying that if someone did $680k damage to your property, that you have to pay to repair out of your own pocket. You'd be screaming for his head on a plate.

 

[Joseph_138]

In some countries, a layoff (i.e. reduction in force), where employees aren't being terminated for any fault of their own, requires them to be given advance notice. So, there'd be an overlap period where they're still employed but aware that their employment will soon end. However, I think nobody says they have to be given the same responsibilities as before they were given notice. So, that could be the workaround many employers take.

The problem with that, is that you're telling them how much time they have to destroy as much as they can before they go. It's better to fire them without notice, so they don't have the opportunity.

 

[thatguyron]

I see that those involved in the S$3b embezzlement had less a sentence, what is the message here?

 

[thatguyron]

You wouldn't be saying that if someone did $680k damage to your property, that you have to pay to repair out of your own pocket. You'd be screaming for his head on a plate.

If you leave a bike parked on the road with no lock on it and the key in the ignition.. do you expect it to be there next week?

 

[USAFRet]

He wasn't "laid off".
He was fired.

"See ya, get out"

"Nagaraju's contract was terminated in October 2022, allegedly due to poor performance, although he stayed in his office until November 16, 2022. Nagaraju said he was confused and upset about the firing, especially as he felt he was performing well in his position."

 

[lethal lender]

Eventual people get tired of getting <Mod Edit> over... The majority of you are boot lickers, considering that's why IT people get paid what, way less then the 90s... 2000s... we had a great thing in the beginning and the majority of you all <Mod Edit> it up for everyone... karma

 

[USAFRet]

Eventual people get tired of getting <Mod Edit> over... The majority of you are boot lickers, considering that's why IT people get paid what, way less then the 90s... 2000s... we had a great thing in the beginning and the majority of you all <Mod Edit> it up for everyone... karma

Or maybe, people (managers?) don't like keeping crappy workers around.

 

[DSzymborski]

If you leave a bike parked on the road with no lock on it and the key in the ignition.. do you expect it to be there next week?

Just because my neighbor forgets to lock his front door doesn't mean I get to stroll in and help myself to his TV.

(If he even has one, since he appears to mow his lawn 12 hours a day, 365 days a year)

 

[DSzymborski]

Laugh all you want - IT doesn't pay what it did in the beginning... So whose really the ..................

Well, why would it? Relatively new fields to tend to have lower ratios of qualified candidates to jobs. If it's a crucial job to boot, that's the formula for high salaries. But growth in this field has been fairly stagnant in recent years.

 

[parkerthon]

I had a coworker who deleted his hard drive, when he left the company. I was able to recover the filesystem, undelete files he had removed, and found he had accessed the laptop from machines on his home network. Can't say any more about that.

Had he not deleted the filesystem, I wouldn't have even thought to recover the deleted files and check to see what it was he was trying to cover up.

Remotely accessed his work laptop from a home machine? What a rebel. :-D Assuming data exfil happened.

 

[parkerthon]

His prison sentence needs to be longer, by about 10x. $680,000 in damage warrants a lot longer sentence than what he got.

It’s all man hours. They will just work their people like dogs to rebuild it all and not pay them anymore than they already are. This guy screwed over his coworkers, not the company. Took him months to figure out how to run a script apparently, no wonder he got canned in first place. And why don’t they have backups of this environment?

 

[bit_user]

The rule is to remove credentials at least 2-3 days before his last. He can use his final days training his successors.

I've never seen that done. I work at a pretty large, US-based company and they always leave your credentials enabled until the end of your last day, if you're leaving voluntarily. Usually, people will send out a goodbye email in the middle of the afternoon of that day, then go meet with HR (Human Resources), turn in their access card, and leave.

 

[bit_user]

The problem with that, is that you're telling them how much time they have to destroy as much as they can before they go. It's better to fire them without notice, so they don't have the opportunity.

Believe me: I'm not oblivious to the risks. In the USA, I've never seen or heard it being done like this, at least if we're talking about office jobs. However employment laws in Northern Ireland are weird for reasons I won't go into, here.

However, something you should consider is that factories commonly do this sort of thing. They will announce, ahead of time, when plants are closing or (I think) having major reductions in staffing. I'm not sure how much of that might be required by law or union contracts, but I assume it's done that way in Belfast probably based on employment law oriented towards industrial jobs.

Also, consider that you typically get severance pay, when you're terminated through a reduction in the workforce. That pay package is conditional upon certain things, one of which would certainly be not causing damage to the company. Also, most people are smart enough to stay on good terms with their employer and former coworkers, in case there's a chance to come back or they have future employment opportunities with some of the same folks.

Whatever the case, they seem to have made it work for them. So, decide for yourself what to make of that.

 

[bit_user]

Remotely accessed his work laptop from a home machine?

The work machine in question was a laptop, which I'd seen him frequently take home. Like I said, I can't say more about it than that, but consider there was probably a reason he wanted to cover his tracks. People with nothing to hide don't usually wipe their hard drives when they quit on good terms.

I've only seen something like that happen one other time, and it was because a guy quit in a huff and deleted his home directory on his way out the door. People were surprised. He was a kinda weird dude who wasn't very social and ate all his lunches at his desk (and not because he was overworked). Had worked there less than a year.

Took him months to figure out how to run a script apparently, no wonder he got canned in first place.

I had this same thought.

 

[UnforcedERROR]

Eventual people get tired of getting <Mod Edit> over... The majority of you are boot lickers, considering that's why IT people get paid what, way less then the 90s... 2000s... we had a great thing in the beginning and the majority of you all <Mod Edit> it up for everyone... karma

The market is notably more saturated and less skilled than the 90s and 2000s. It's not specialized in the same ways, and anyone could've seen that coming with the exponential growth of the tech industry. Has absolutely nothing to do with boot licking, the job's just infinitely more common. That, and honestly people are (generally) more tech savvy than they were in the 90s and 2000s. I never leverage my IT department unless I'm required to (which is often for new equipment), as I am competent enough to troubleshoot problems on my own.

 

[techfreak]

In some countries, a layoff (i.e. reduction in force), where employees aren't being terminated for any fault of their own, requires them to be given advance notice. So, there'd be an overlap period where they're still employed but aware that their employment will soon end. However, I think nobody says they have to be given the same responsibilities as before they were given notice. So, that could be the workaround many employers take.

I reside in Singapore, unfornuately labor law in SG is very weak and employers can
go by their own rule.
What you say is true, example MOM SG rule is 1 month notice or pay salary in lieu.

Usually when you are about to be terminated/layoff, usualy it's very sudden and you will be ask
to leave on the spot. What you say maybe true that the staff feel disgruntled that
for whatever reasons they are not given prior notice.

When they report to office, only for HR and reporting officer to meet you.
Just to inform you that today will be last day and you be paid accordingly.
I am not sure how other country employment law is but I do understand.

Some countries will need prior notice like 3 months in advance but not on the spot.
Allow the employee to handover and transit to another job elsewhere.
Here in SG is not like this, if you are layoff you are on your own.

 

[wrerkec]

Here's a happy ending. After we fired an engineer for documented incompetence, we got a phone call from a former employer informing us that this employee had just that same day been found guilty of destroying company property when they fired him a couple of years earlier. Fortunately we had taken extreme care to make sure he could do nothing as we walked him out the door and shut off all of his access.

They couldn't warn us before the legal proceedings had finished

He ended up spending several years behind bars in a state penitentiary. 👍

 

[JTWrenn]

If you leave a bike parked on the road with no lock on it and the key in the ignition.. do you expect it to be there next week?

No, but I should be able to. Not protecting yourself from horrible people does not make horrible people morale right for doing horrible things. The idea that we need to protect ourselves doesn't mean people who do these things are not horrible.

 

[bit_user]

No, but I should be able to. Not protecting yourself from horrible people does not make horrible people morale right for doing horrible things. The idea that we need to protect ourselves doesn't mean people who do these things are not horrible.

I think, in pretty much every jurisdiction, the law is pretty clear on this point: it's illegal to take something that doesn't belong to you. However, if it appears to be abandoned, that is a significant fact. However, that's not the same as the owner is merely careless (i.e. forgets to lock car). Typically, there are added crimes that come into effect for someone who breaks into a home or a locked car, for instance.

Some people say "a lock keeps an honest man honest", though I'm not a big fan of that, since a truly honest person should have enough integrity to resist such temptations. However, I do think it's immoral to create unnecessary temptation, especially around anyone who might be desperate.

 

[Madkog]

The fact is we don't know to much other than he broke the law and paid for it with a sentence.

Obviously you don't break the law, but maybe just maybe he was treated pretty poorly.

You never know when your in a similar situation of being terminated unfairly or even fairly for whatever reason.

No one ever thinks they are a poor performer and performance is often a cover up for a reason to downsize or just trying to get rid of people they don't like or want anymore.

Lets not all act high and mighty

 

[bit_user]

The fact is we don't know to much other than he broke the law and paid for it with a sentence.

Obviously you don't break the law, but maybe just maybe he was treated pretty poorly.

You never know when your in a similar situation of being terminated unfairly or even fairly for whatever reason.

There's no valid justification for intentional destruction of property (unless it's somehow done in a good-faith attempt to stop an even greater harm).

No one ever thinks they are a poor performer and performance is often a cover up for a reason to downsize or just trying to get rid of people they don't like or want anymore.

In some countries, firing someone for cause when you're really just trying to downsize is a violation of employment law. If the employee can show they were unjustly terminated with cause, there could be legal recourses. This is why companies generally don't lie about their reason for getting rid of someone, though I'm sure it happens.

 

[FoxtrotMichael-1]

I had a coworker who deleted his hard drive, when he left the company. I was able to recover the filesystem, undelete files he had removed, and found he had accessed the laptop from machines on his home network. Can't say any more about that.

Had he not deleted the filesystem, I wouldn't have even thought to recover the deleted files and check to see what it was he was trying to cover up.

Deleting the file system is amateur hour. I generally dd my drive with random data twice before returning laptops to my employers. I’m pretty diligent about ensuring all work is committed to GitHub and they usually have backups of critical directories. We all have to download the occasional personal file to our company laptops at least once and I’m just too paranoid to hand it back over.

 

[nameless0ne]

Obviously, he really was an underperformer and incompetent considering how easy he made it for them to identify him and capture him.

His only mistake was leaving evidence on his laptop. The only clue were the source IPs for the commands. It is likely he didn't use a proxy/vpn to hide his country. The article does not mention if his credentials were identified as being used for the attack. It is likely they suspected him because of the source country, timeline of him being made redundant and the fact that authorized credentials were used. If he was arrested and nothing was found on his PC then there would not be a case against him.
Companies use performance review as an excuse to lay off people all the time. Most famously - Amazon does this all the time without any recourse for the employee.
... still not an excuse to do what he did.

 

[nameless0ne]

There's no valid justification for intentional destruction of property (unless it's somehow done in a good-faith attempt to stop an even greater harm).


In some countries, firing someone for cause when you're really just trying to downsize is a violation of employment law. If the employee can show they were unjustly terminated with cause, there could be legal recourses. This is why companies generally don't lie about their reason for getting rid of someone, though I'm sure it happens.

Singapore does not have the best reputation for foreign workers' rights. They kinda locked a bunch of foreign workers in a building during pandemic where the disease spread rampant. This caused riots.
It is mentioned in the article that the 'employee' had to leave country immediately since he did not have employment. Companies know that and it is one of the reasons US companies like H2 visa holders. You let them go and they will likely leave country since it is hard to find an employer who is willing to hire immediately and deal with the visa process.