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Fannie Mae Contractor Indicted For Planting Malicious Code Time Bomb
SecurityProNews
Staff Writer
2009-01-30
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Wouldn't it have been fun, after all of Fannie Mae's other woes, their entire IT system-consisting of 4,000 servers, just up and crashed? Had it not been for a chance discovery, that would have happened tomorrow morning.
 | | Fannie Mae Contractor Indicted For Planting Malicious Code Time Bomb |  |
Imagine if, after 9:00 a.m. tomorrow, anyone trying to log on to Fannie Mae servers was greeted with an error message reading "Server Graveyard." If Rajendrasinh Makwana did what a federal grand jury thinks he did, Fannie Mae would have been sent back to the 19th Century.
The grand jury indicted Makwana yesterday for allegedly planting a virus on Fannie Mae's system on October 24, the day he was fired. The hidden code was set like a time bomb to execute at 9:00 a.m., January 31, 2009. A senior engineer discovered the malicious code "only by chance" of scrolling down past a blank page four days later.
Investigators traced the attacker's IP address back to Makwana's company-issued laptop. He was arrested January 7.
Yesterday, Purdue University released its Unsecured Economies: Protecting Vital Information report, which warns against internal sabotage in times of economic troubles. In addition to grudges, like in Makwana's case, researchers fear corporate "cyber moles," or financially troubled employees would be tempted to steal vital information and sell it on the cybermafia-run data black market.
Forty-two percent of 800 CIO respondents said displaced employees were the biggest threat to vital information. "As belts tighten and the credit crunch continues to hit around the world," says Sophos's Graham Cluley, "more and more companies will be making the decision to make staff and contractors redundant…a disaffected employee could create havoc inside your organisation so make sure that appropriate security is in place.
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SecurityProNews is a daily online and email publication focusing on internet security issues.
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