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Arrested Fannie Mae Worker Attempted to Plant Computer Virus

by Tim Stevens on January 30, 2009 at 02:56 PM

Former Fannie Mae Worker Attempted to Plant Computer Virus, ArrestedHave you ever been tempted to do something mean on your last day of employment after an unexpected termination? You know, maybe shred the files that your successor would need, or take your boss's chair and hide it somewhere? We've all had the temptation, but few have attempted to do something quite so bad as Rajendrasinh Makwana, who installed a virus set to delete everything on his employer's servers two months after he left. The worst part is his employer was Fannie Mae, the government-funded mortgage security firm.

On October 24, Makwana, an Indian citizen working in Washington D.C., was fired for making changes to his computer security settings without getting permission and, before he left the building that day, deployed a virus onto the company's servers. The virus was set to run on January 31. It would begin by shutting down access to the servers, then would delete all the data on them, causing the entire company to go offline and stay offline until backups could be restored -- assuming the company was keeping good backups.

Thankfully, a server administrator at Fannie Mae spotted the virus, determined where it came from, and Makwana was summarily arrested. He's been released on $100,000 bail and is awaiting trial on charges of computer intrusion. [From: dcexaminer.com]

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Tags: fannie mae, FannieMae, hack, safety, security, virus

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