A former systems engineer has ended up in prison after being found guilty of destroying critical US Army network resources
Last week, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) said Barrence Anthony worked for Federated IT, a federal agency tasked with handling the networks of the US Army, including financial applications and education systems.
The 40-year-old was hired in 2016 and when he was fired, he apparently decided to get his revenge.
US prosecutors said that not only had he sabotaged the Chaplain Corps military unit's servers, deleting all administrator and user accounts except his own, but he had also changed the WHOIS domain name information to avoid detection.
Although the engineer did not have the authority to do so, he was able to contact GoDaddy and change the domain from chaplaincorps.net to “Anthony Enterprises.”
Additionally, 19 apprentices in Jackson, South Carolina, were unable to access their network or accounts, which disrupted their education.
After ensuring he had exclusive access to the military network, Anthony “illegally shared private information” and proceeded to delete files.
The data obtained included AWS service account information and network diagrams. System image copies, also known as AMAZON Machine Images (AMIs), were created and shared.
After his dismissal, Anthony completely wiped out a test serverbelonging to the US Army's Web Application system, and since there were no backups, the system had to be rebuilt from scratch. A total of 37,439 attacks launched later against the same system have also been attributed to Anthony.
The engineer was convicted in the US and will spend the next two years in prison.
