[xtinct]

Holy smoke....

[damnyankee57]

$500 sez this jackass is a DIMocrat operative. Wait & see. A week or two from now.

[Anti-Bubba182]

Fannie Mae Contractor Indicted For Logic Bomb

"..It was mere chance that a senior Unix engineer with Fannie Mae discovered a logic bomb.

The logic bomb, a malicious script designed to wipe Fannie Mae's 4,000 servers, was allegedly placed by Rajendrasinh Makwana, an IT contractor who worked in Fannie Mae's Urbana, Md., facility. It was set to execute on Jan. 31. Had it done so, Fannie Mae engineers expect it would have caused millions of dollars in damage and possibly shut down the government-sponsored mortgage lender for a week.[snip]

[snip]The discovery occurred on Oct. 29. Makwana had been terminated as a Fannie Mae contractor on Oct. 24, around 1 or 1:30 p.m., the affidavit says, but his network access was not terminated until late that evening. Makwana was fired for allegedly creating a computer script earlier that month that changed server settings without the permission of his supervisor.

Makwana was not required to turn in his badge or Fannie Mae-supplied laptop until the end of the day on Oct. 24. According to Nye's affidavit, it was during that afternoon that Makwana is alleged to have planted the malicious script...."

[gieriscm]

With all due respect, if Fannie Mae's data isn't backed up regularly (and I'm talking hourly) and physically stored offsite then their network admins need to be smacked. Data integrity and security ain't exactly rocket science.

Of course, they probably can't afford a CISSP on staff...

[Doe Eyes]

Says here he was an immigrant with an H-1B Visa.

Indian H-1B Plants Logic Bomb in Fannie Mae Servers

[Hoffer Rand]

Only slightly off topic. Stuff like this totally makes you want to sign on for congress’ new plan to make a national database for everyone’s medical records, doesn’t it?

[expatpat]

How did they catch him, just in time?

[rfp1234]

He’s a Virginia resident...it was a “Makwana moment”.

[wagyu steak]

Bwarny Fwank raided Fannie & Freddie...
Does that make him a Fannie Bandit?

[Ulysse]

ping

[Liberty Valance]

bttt
part 2: The cover-up

[philman_36]

Feds allege plot to destroy Fannie Mae data
Makwana, a citizen of India, was fired early on the afternoon of Oct. 24 from his job at Fannie Mae's data center in Urbana...
Snip...Before surrendering his Fannie Mae badge and laptop computer at the end of the day...
Snip...According to the affidavit signed by FBI Special Agent Jessica A. Nye Jan. 6, a Fannie Mae engineer discovered the malicious instructions by chance Oct. 29. The programming instructions were removed that day and did no harm, according to the affidavit.

What is that stinky fish smell?

I guess somebody is going to have to look at what was happening at Fannie Mae around Oct. 24...

[Gandalf_The_Gray]

Rosenstein says that on that day, Makwana programmed a computer with a malicious code that was set to spread throughout the Fannie Mae network and destroy all data this Saturday.

Yeah, he might have been able to fry the hard drives in all the servers but he sure wasn't gonna be able to erase the backup tapes that are run every day by IT pros. If you have data on your machine that is worth something, YOU should be doing backups too!

Regards,
GtG PS You'll never realize what data can cost you 'till you lose a drive, once is way to many.

[LurkedLongEnough]

Wow, this is a big one. But... he’s out on bail.

[JrsyJack]

Why didn’t they just send Sandy Berger to smuggle the data out in his pants?

[grey_whiskers]

What a crock. H1-B's are supposed to be reserved for jobs with critical skillsets, for which there is a shortage of American-born workers.

I'm sure with the mortgage crisis, there is NO shortage of American geeks who would want to cripple the Fannie Mae systems ;-)

Cheers!

[philman_36]

I strongly feel in my gut that this news release was issued so that it would cause people to question what was going on. This incident happened three months ago and it is only just now hitting the wires.

...a malicious code that was set to spread throughout the Fannie Mae network and destroy all data this Saturday.
The questions I keep asking myself...What was going to happen in the next two or three days that would prompt such action?
Why didn't this guy, if his intent was merely to destroy the information, set the bug to go off the very next day after his firing instead of waiting for three months?

There are answers to these questions, I'm sure. I'm just not that informed on the issue yet to make any kind of guess.

[Doohickey]

Hey, that’s my town. Glen Allen is just west of Richmond if you don’t feel like looking it up. I didn’t know Fannie had any offices down here.

Funny, this hasn’t turned up in the local news...

[philman_36]

Fannie Mae Redemption
Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) will redeem the principal amounts indicated for the following securities issues on the redemption dates indicated below at a redemption price equal to 100 percent of the principal amount redeemed, plus accrued interest thereon to the date of redemption:
February 1, 2009
February 2, 2009

[philman_36]

Foreclosures and Delaying the Day of Reckoning
Putting foreclosures on hold to allow time for lenders and servicers to work things out is a popular notion these days. Recently, both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac extended their holiday foreclosure suspension to Jan. 31, giving the companies more time to hammer out the details of their streamlined loan modification program.

There seem to be several reasons for the bug to have been implemented today instead of three months ago.

[jetson]

Maybe the commie news stations will have to start reporting some truth about who was really responsible for the Fannie Mae failure.