Fired Employee Causes Massive Damage by Deleting Test Servers
Solomon Thompson / 5 months ago
A former employee’s actions resulted in significant financial losses for his previous employer, NCS, after he deleted all 180 of its test servers. This incident highlights the severe risks posed by disgruntled ex-employees.
How the Incident Occurred
Kandula Nagaraju, a 39-year-old Indian national, worked at NCS in Singapore. After being terminated in October 2022 due to poor performance, he felt upset and confused. He returned to India without securing a new job in Singapore. Despite his termination, Nagaraju discovered that his login credentials were still valid, allowing him to access NCS’s systems remotely.
Between January and March 2023, Nagaraju repeatedly accessed the company’s quality assurance (QA) systems. He used Google to find scripts that could delete servers and tested them on NCS’s systems. In March, he executed a script that deleted all 180 virtual servers one by one to avoid immediate detection.
The Financial Impact
The NCS QA team discovered the deletion on March 20, 2023. They reported the incident to the police in April after realizing the extent of the damage. The company estimated the financial impact at around $678,000 (S$918,000). Fortunately, no sensitive information was stored on the deleted servers.
Authorities tracked Nagaraju’s location using IP addresses and seized his laptop, finding the scripts he used. He was sentenced to two years and eight months in jail for unauthorized access to computer material.
