"An Australian has admitted causing AUS$1m in damage"

"The ploy failed miserably and he was quickly arrested and charged."

Really? It sounds like his ploy was all of one million Australian dollars successful.

You can always rely on a Macintosh to screw things up.

Whenever I hear about large damages to computer systems, all I can think of is that they didn't have any proper backup system in place to just roll back to.

PS, 'cause I know what she'll back up to!

Is this a new disease or a biscuit or what?

I knew those Apple guys were no good...

If anyone causes that much damage to non-revenue-generating IT systems, I would fire the mangers in charge of security and backups.

This is the Northern Territory right? How long can it take to re-enter *all* the civil servants' records? One temp for a day? How does that hit $1m in costs?

so, no, there were no backups.

We don't have that kind of system downunda, as 'backup' was deemed a rude word by the Great Australian Firewall.

PS, anyone see the story about the Gov-un-ment's welfare ID database getting blagged? Wonder if it's related.....

I wouldn't even use Paris as an icon - even she's brighter than the Aussie Gov!

For the record, this was not exactly a high-tech hack. There are added local rumours he was significantly drunk on the night in question, and the company is not exactly ranked as the most pleasant organisation to work for.

Once in the system, it was probably a <Ctrl-A><Del><OK>

Effective? Yes.

Elegant? No.

Traceable? Completely.

The forensic IT services in Darwin hardly have the equivalent resources as the FBI, and he was picked up pretty much the next day.

He seemed like a nice enough guy under normal circumstances :)