back to article Fired IT director admits $94k rampage on organ bank

A former technology director who was fired from a regional organ donation center in Texas has admitted to breaking into her former employer's network and destroying more than $94,000 worth of data. Danielle Duann, 51, of Houston admitted that in November 2005 she illegally accessed the network of LifeGift just hours after …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Idiot...

    Any good IT admin knows that you just make a script that won't run so long as you type in a sequence each day, and set it to activate randomly, that way, you can never be traced.

    Also, Why does the story specify that it was a Dell Laptop? Or even a laptop at all? Product placement?

  2. Eddie Johnson
    Flame

    Remember

    Revenge is a dish best served cold.

    This idiot got busted reacting in the heat of the moment.

  3. Andrew Moore

    Ah nostalgia...

    The first time I ever hacked a system (a VAX mainframe), I got caught because I returned to cover my tracks and the sys admins were waiting for me. Learnt a powerful lesson that day.

  4. AngrySup
    Go

    The "unexpected meeting" script.

    I like AC's thought, but I just have a script that I can activate whenever there's an unexpected meeting. Nothing bad on the network, but it does delete all of my working files (backed up off-site, of course).

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Rampage on organ bank

    An organ bank! I mean, come on.

    Hopefully it was worth a few years inside and the end of her career.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The companies at fault as well.

    They didnt disable access?

    I work as a remote technician for a website hosting company, that has a lot of remote employees/contractors.

    Currently REALLY critical systems dont allow access unless your IP address is listed with our admin team.

    In the event of a technicians IP address changing (dang ISPs), their old one is removed and the new one put in.

    In the event of someone leaving/getting fired, their IP address is removed from the system, and all backend systems passwords are changed.

    Usually within minutes.

    Also the person who did this was an idiot, logging into their own old account to do it? Everyone knows you use another employees access and then do it from a public terminal.

    Alternatively, if you work for a large company, just keep a list of all the different ways they try to screw customers and if your fired, make the list public.

    Posted AC as bosses may be lurking.

  7. Pierre
    Happy

    How stupid can you get?

    Breaking havoc in you employeer's network using *your* *bloody* *vpn* *credentials* from *your* *home* *connection*? Like robbing your bank and giving your name, address and account number to the cashier so that she can transfer the money directly, saving you the trouble with banknotes-filled bags. Sure, what could possibly go wrong?

    Jen, is that you?

    This actually made me laugh, they should put it in The IT Crowd...

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    $94K?

    The overinflated numbers these companies pull out of their nether regions never cease to amaze me. Either they're lying through their teeth or using the world's most overpriced backup system.

  9. This post has been deleted by its author

  10. Chris Wright
    Thumb Down

    @ Andrew Moore

    And what lesson was that ? not to be an arse ?

    Tbh if she was fired for being shit at her job then she should have accepted that and walked away , if however, she thought she was good at her job then go for unfair dismissal ... 9 times out of 10 disgruntled IT people who are fired and try to hack the system and break stuff fail because of the reason they were fired ... They fail at IT!

    What a stupid cow!

  11. Doug Glass
    Go

    "to delete organ donation information"

    Sounds like attempted murder to me. Methinks a fitting punishment would be to donate her organs to a few of the people whose information she deleted. And donate them NOW !

  12. Winkypop Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Spare parts

    Break her up for parts!

  13. Cullen Newsom
    Stop

    Backups

    What's the $94,000.00 for, they had backups, didn't they? And aren't these Dell laptops too powerful? Somebody ought to make a law...

  14. Sillyfellow

    lesson

    The clearest moral of this story is that admins should never, under any circumstances, ever tell anyone else their admin password. the real failure here was that one of their co-admins (presumably still working for that company) had given her their password. which is just crazy and stupid. and that individual should face disciplinary action.

  15. Colin
    Joke

    11th Commandment anyone?

    Surely the first rule of doing anything even mildly wrong, is make sure no one else is looking before you try it.

    Personally I would have gone for locking out any other remote users, then take my revenge, wiped the logs and finally as an optional extra, I'd have gone for the old favourite and left several nasty suprises lurking in place for the admin bod to trip when the company tried to trace what had happened.

    By preference the sort of suprises that the BOFH would leave if by some foul miracle the Boss actually managed the impossible and got the BOFH fired. :)

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Another admin time bomb...

    I had a friend who once changed all the Windows NT servers of a bad company, so that all the major services and applications ran under the domain admin account.

    This worked well, even after the admin account password was changed the day he left.

    Imagine the chaos though, a few weeks later when they finally got around to rebooting the servers.... not a single service would start ---- Ouch!!!

    Paris? I'm sure there is a joke in there somewhere about services and backdoors?.

  17. Maty

    Not necessarily malicious

    Many sysadmins will leave a backdoor to get back into the system even after they have left. Even the best-run outfits tend to grow organically and have their little quirks that a new sysadmin can't be expected to get to grips with. I'd go so far as to say that it's a rare sysadmin who doesn't do a bit of unpaid support after leaving a company, and sometimes the easiest way to do it is to log right in with admin privileges you have left yourself.

  18. Andus McCoatover

    Would this create havoc?

    http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntucat/how-to-reset-a-windows-xp-password-with-ubuntu/

    Well, dunno.

    Me? I just use an abacus and an Eee nowadays... Too fuc*king dumb to be employed, or use a calculator, and can't even bring coloured pencils to an interview, it seems...(I'm like the current PM, not the brightest crayon in the box)

    Gorritt!!! LABOUR PARTY TOP JOB !!! Fuc*k me, never thought of that! Is #10 Downing Street a 'des-res'? Council tax? Bin Tax? Decongestion charge? Seems that dullards only need apply..................................................................................................................................(sorry, fell asleep at the keyboard with the concept).

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    100,000 years in chokey

    That should make the message clear to her.

  20. Chris C

    Pathetic

    Why is it that whenever we get a story like this, there are countless people celebrating and encouraging such actions. First, none of us have any idea why her employment was terminated. Second, willful destruction of data/property is NEVER the answer to employment termination, no matter what the reason for termination was. Third, THIS WAS A FUCKING ORGAN DONOR COMPANY. Her actions could very well cause many deaths. Thing is NOT a laughing matter.

    As for those people questioning the amount of damages, try using your brain (assuming you have one). "Damages" does not simply mean "uh, I like, restored the files from the uh... tape thingy... or something". When your network is compromised, even through an account you stupidly left activated, there's a lot more to do than simply restoring data from backup. You have to go through all of the systems to find what is missing (hence what to restore), and to make sure nothing was planted on the systems, verifying user authentication, etc. It's a long, tedious, and yes, expensive process.

    Was the company obscenely stupid for not terminating her VPN account and for not changing administrator passwords immediately? Absolutely. But that does not excuse or lessen the seriousness of her actions.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    Yawn

    Another Merkin ex-admin goes nuts.

    Who CARES?

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