Posted on 09/27/2020 12:23:02 AM PDT by nickcarraway
After he was demoted and fired, idiot logged into office PC from home and wiped storage systems
An IT guy, who was tasked with locking out ex-employees from the company network, has been jailed after he logged in after being fired and wiped an office's computer storage drives.
Shannon Stafford, 50, was sent down for 12 months and a day by US federal district Judge Catherine Blake on Thursday. He will also have to pay his former bosses restitution totaling $193,258.10.
Following a four-day trial in Maryland, a jury in November found Stafford, of Crofton, Maryland, guilty [verdict, charges PDF] of intentional damage to a computer and attempted intentional damage to a computer.
The case stems from the 2015 dismissal of Stafford at an unnamed business described by the Feds only as "a global company with thousands of employees and offices around the world." After a decade of working in tech support at the organization's Washington DC office, he was promoted in 2014 to an IT management role: specifically, technical site lead. By March 2015, though, he was demoted back to the helpdesk for poor performance, and eventually fired that August.
" As part of his duties, Stafford had access to the system login credentials of other employees and was authorized to use them in the course of performing his technical support duties," prosecutors noted.
"Stafford was also responsible for disabling company users’ network access credentials at the end of their employment."
On the day he was terminated, Stafford didn't return his work-issued MacBook Pro, went home, and that evening used the laptop and his home internet connection to repeatedly attempt to log into the company's network using his credentials and those of a former colleague. A couple of days later, in the early hours, he managed to get into his office PC remotely using the coworker's details. From there he was able to "delete all of the file storage drives used by the Washington office, then changed the password to access the storage management system," the Dept of Justice said.
The prosecutors went on:
The deletion of the files caused a severe disruption to the company’s operations and the loss of some customer and user data. Changing the password hindered the company’s efforts to determine what happened and restore access to its remaining files. As a result of the deletion of the network file storage drives, Washington users were unable to access their stored files for approximately three days, until the data could be restored from backups. Customer and user data that was not included in the most recent backup prior to Stafford’s deletion of the files was permanently lost.
Three days later, he tried again to log in using others' credentials and failed. A couple of days passed and the company warned Stafford to knock it off and leave the biz alone. He continued to try to log in, and at one point tried to get into the Baltimore office's network to also nuke its files. He was later nabbed by the Feds.
The one-year-and-a-day prison term marks a halfway point between the two years prosecutors had sought. Once his sentence is complete, Stafford will be subject to a further three years of supervised release, and is unlikely to be hired again as an IT worker.
If the DNC has an opening he can just take a middle eastern name and fit right in.
Unlikely to be hired again...
The main reason is because he is 50.
As someone who has worked in the IT field most of my professional career I’ve seen cases when companies fire or layoff IT workers, companies hire private security to escort them out of the office after collecting all company property just to avoid this type of situation
> “Stafford was also responsible for disabling company users’ network access credentials at the end of their employment.”
This seems like a job that could be automated away by a script that disables a user's account when their HR record is changed to “terminated”. And the computer doing that won't have a fit and delete everything on its way out.
Better call tech support. Ask for Peggy.
Guessing he was replaced by H1B Indian trash to kick off his retribution
The big problem is when a dating/married couple both work in the IT Dept and one gets the boot. Ask me how I know...
Then we had a new young employee with great potential who could not resist attempting to give himself domain admin in AD and hacking into the network. That did not end well.
I was working the night shift at the time when the young guy who sat next to me didn’t show up, when I asked what happened, I was told he was fired for hacking thru the company firewall and running a chat session with his buddies on the outside...
After inspecting his laptop, it was discovered he was discussing his life as a Furry and Plushie with his buddies and what they were going to do to each other.
I had to admit at being somewhat embarrassed that I did not know was a Furry was but was a little nauseous after finding out...
fantastic! /s
Yeah, he did not cover his tracks very well. I would not hire a person who did not know what TOR and a VPN was.
I work in IT, and this is always a risk.
He apparently knew the passwords of many users. Likely, most of them were voluntarily given to him (which I steadfastly refuse to do) by users themselves or in the process of fixing things, came across unencrypted files that people use to store their passwords in (often named “passwords.docx” or passwords.xlsx”
And that is when people don’t just tape their passwords to their computer or the bottom of the keyboard (so clever), or the IT person doesn’t stand over them and simply watch their keystrokes.
Funny. As an IT person, I have people sometimes beg to give me their passwords so it makes it easier to fix their problems, which I studiously refuse. I I am forced by circumstances to have to do that, I require them to change it.
It is odd being in that position of knowing passwords and combing through files on a computer that is not yours. I have developed the trick of being “blind” and not retaining any information, filenames, or images I see when trying to fix a computer. Of course, if I ever saw something really heinous, I would have to report it in some way. I hope I never do.
Ugh. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know. It does have a semi-humorous side...
I had a Ex-Army colonel who was our head, a short, Indian woman who terrified people. She called me one day and said she had something she had to show me.
When I walked into her office, she had the nastiest, raunchiest porn playing on her screen and said “Look at this! How did this get on my computer?”
I had no doubt she did not put it there...one never knows, but...you get a feel for people, and it certainly wasn’t her. Apparently, she left the computer on and logged in and when someone entered her office to clean it, it was a clean slate for them.
Although, to be fair, she had plenty of enemies, and I could see a set up, but that would have never stuck. Even people who hated her would have laughed at the suggestion she looked at porn!
I had to laugh at that too, and the indignant, angry look on that formidable face of hers was just...funny!
I did this once - sorta.
I gave notice at the company I was working for and in return they terminated me. When I got home I remembered some personal stuff that I had left on my work computer. It wasn’t illegal, embarrassing, or compromising but I didn’t want to leave it behind.
So I took a chance and remoted into my work machine. To my surprise my credentials still worked! I was able to remotely purge everything from my computer. I did NOT sabotage anything else.
The following day my curiosity got the best of me and I tried remoting in again. This time my credentials failed - IT had finally done their job!
If you want a sanitized version of what Furry is, CSI Las Vegas had an episode about Furries.
They were holding a convention on Las Vegas and someone was murdered
I know about 90% of them where I am.
Not that I want to. Most are too lazy or have 0 concept of how things work.
With that being said, I have yet to find anything actually offensive on a box. The majority are on the straight and narrow.
What few incidents I know of were overseas branches.
LOL, thanks to FR, I don’t need to do that.
I remember the first time I saw that mentioned on this site, and I thought “What the HELL is this? This has to be sick satire...it can’t be for real!”
But it was. When I saw that, I brooded for a while and was worried that, as a society, had we dropped so far into degeneracy that there was no way back to normalcy?
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