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A Dev Built a Kill Switch That Activated When He Got Fired. Now He’s Convicted of Criminal Sabotage
Gizmodo ^ | 10 March 2025 | AJ Dellinger

Posted on 03/11/2025 11:59:28 AM PDT by ShadowAce

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To: P8riot

I once heard of a guy who put raw shrimp in a filing cabinet and then disabled the lock.

Now that’s nasty.


41 posted on 03/11/2025 3:06:52 PM PDT by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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To: Big Red Badger

i got RIF’d twice in the 80’s and personally escorted out of the building by the head of security which i found amusing...


42 posted on 03/11/2025 3:28:12 PM PDT by Chode (there is no fall back position, there's no rally point, there is no LZ... we're on our own. #FJB)
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To: Pikachu_Dad
> Your implying having microSoft WinDoze as your operating system IS the kill switch?

Not exactly, LOL. But since the kill switch was named "IsDLEnabledinAD" it's fairly obvious that it was a Windows environment.

43 posted on 03/11/2025 4:28:23 PM PDT by dayglored (This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it. Psalms 118:24)
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To: The Spirit Of Allegiance

Well said.


44 posted on 03/11/2025 4:29:21 PM PDT by dayglored (This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it. Psalms 118:24)
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To: Chode

Me too,
I asked if they would put the Cuffs on me for a Joke.
.
No sense of Humor
They Tazed me.


45 posted on 03/11/2025 4:31:05 PM PDT by Big Red Badger (ALL Things Will be Revealed !)
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To: P8riot
Not sure how they got rid of the smell.

They didn't. The whole ship still smells like rotten eggs.

46 posted on 03/11/2025 4:33:55 PM PDT by Drew68 (I haven’t seen the Democrats this mad since yesterday. Save some tears for tomorrow.)
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To: Big Red Badger

nope, no sense of humor at all...


47 posted on 03/11/2025 4:33:56 PM PDT by Chode (there is no fall back position, there's no rally point, there is no LZ... we're on our own. #FJB)
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To: ShadowAce

With *NIX, simple enough to do, even without access to a personnel database.

There are lots of one-line commands that will crash the OS. Some also will corrupt all the data in the doing. They teach some of these to junior admins so they know what NOT to do.

So create a daily cron job as the trigger. It tests whether File X has been ‘touched’ in the last 30 days. If the file hasn’t been touched in 30 days, invoke the corruption routine.

First thing every morning on reporting to work, open File X to reset its ‘last touched’ date. If you don’t come to work for 30 days, the cron job takes for granted you want the place burned down and has at it.


48 posted on 03/11/2025 5:49:56 PM PDT by Paal Gulli
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To: JoeRender

Personally, I live in a market that’s small enough that if you were to sabotage a system,it would keep them from getting a job.


49 posted on 03/11/2025 5:52:05 PM PDT by Mean Daddy
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To: AppyPappy

Lot of a-holes in IT that’s for sure. I worked for a guy who a lot of people thought was a jerk but he had high standards and if he questioned you, you better have an answer or tell him you’d get back to him with one. He just expected a lot out of folks but it was never personal.

My first IT manager I worked for, his father was a multi-millionaire lawyer who had a building named after him at a university and he had a full auto Tommy machine gun. I never shot it but he took some co-workers out with the stipulation they had to pay for the ammo they shot. Everyone said it was a blast to shoot. e had gone through the process to get all the appropriate licenses and this was back in the late 1980s.


50 posted on 03/11/2025 5:58:34 PM PDT by Mean Daddy
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To: ShadowAce

Maybe he got moved around cause he was smart, but had a lousy attitude...
Don’t Windows “updates” and enhancements do the same kind of things to our computers?


51 posted on 03/11/2025 11:11:36 PM PDT by Getready (Wisdom is more valuable than gold and harder to find. )
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To: ShadowAce

Its been done: https://www.computerworld.com/article/1353402/computer-saboteur-sentenced-to-federal-prison.html


52 posted on 03/12/2025 3:59:26 AM PDT by AbolishCSEU (Amount of "child" support paid is inversely proportionate to mother's actual parenting of children)
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To: Drew68

Guess I made a lasting impact


53 posted on 03/12/2025 6:11:54 AM PDT by P8riot (You will never know Jesus Christ as a reality in your life until you know Him as a necessity.)
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To: srmanuel

True, but he planted the code to monitor if he still worked there, and trigger if not.


54 posted on 03/12/2025 2:30:27 PM PDT by Still Thinking (Freedom is NOT a loophole!)
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To: Jamestown1630

Not in this guy’s case, at least.


55 posted on 03/12/2025 2:59:34 PM PDT by Still Thinking (Freedom is NOT a loophole!)
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To: apillar

AND don’t use your initials in the name of the program, AND have it delete itself after it’s done its damage.


56 posted on 03/12/2025 3:04:04 PM PDT by Still Thinking (Freedom is NOT a loophole!)
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To: AbolishCSEU

Ooh, I’d forgotten about that case. I’m in industrial control systems where Omega was up until that time a significant player so we were aware when it happened.


57 posted on 03/12/2025 3:20:13 PM PDT by Still Thinking (Freedom is NOT a loophole!)
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To: ShadowAce

I used Clarion/Top Speed to create a program that tracked orders through our company. I started it in early 90’s and while it was updated over time, a lot of the code and files were legacy. We had been using the program for about 14 years when the crap hit the fan.

So we went through a merger and, a year later, I found myself being let go. I was the VP of Operations and a minority owner, but the yutzes we had merged with had screwed up, put the company in a financially untenable situation, and somebody had to go. Two of the five owners were cut loose.

When I started writing the program, I made the order number field only 5 characters. I could see that we were approaching 99999 and that I was going to have a big project. There were 17 relational files and a couple dozen data screens and reports that were going to have to be changed. I estimated between 48 and 72 hours to complete the task. We were closed over Christmas break, so I had planned on doing it then. They let me go in November and gave me until the end of the year to train the 5 people that were replacing me.

All that to say I was not motivated to make the update.

A month after I was gone, one of the remaining owners contacted me. He saw they were approaching 99999 and wanted to know what would happen. I explained that the files, screens and reports needed to be updated. We were moving to New Mexico in a week, but I offered to do it over a weekend for $4500. They laughed and said they would handle it.

A year later we were back in town for my Dad’s memorial service. I swung by the old job to see how they were coming along.

The same owner that had asked me about the 99999 situation pulled me into his office. He said that the other owners might not be happy to see me. Without going into details, instead of costing them the $4500 I had offered to do the job, they ended up paying over $45,000 to have it done and it shut down the company for two weeks.

It made me smile.


58 posted on 03/12/2025 3:39:28 PM PDT by Crusher138 ("Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just")
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To: dayglored
The way to avoid an exit bomb is simply to leave the identity account "active" (not disabled, certainly not deleted), but change the password to a long random string, rotate (change) but don't remove any other login credentials (identity keys, multi-factor auth tokens, etc.), and disable any "I forgot my password" mechanisms that allow user-requested password reset.

I retired from an AD IT environment about a decade or so, I am bit rusty on this subject matter. However, it appears to me the person in question had AD Admin privileges and were never removed when he was demoted. If his account privileges would have been limited to just the server he was working on, it is unlikely he would have nuked the company when he left.

59 posted on 03/12/2025 4:49:19 PM PDT by EVO X ( )
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To: PGR88

I thought it was Su, not Lu??? ;-)


60 posted on 03/13/2025 10:50:43 AM PDT by mbj
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