A former IT consultant hacked into a Carlsbad, California, company and deleted nearly all of its Microsoft Office 365 accounts in a bid to get revenge on his former employer. The outraged employee was sentenced to two years in prison for the act. More than 1,200 user accounts were deleted in the act of sabotage, which caused the company to shut down for two days.
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Deepanshu Kher worked for an IT consulting firm that sent him to a client to help migrate to services . After customer complaints, his employer removed him from the task in January 2018 and fired him in early May of that year. Kher returned to his native India, feeling hatred for his employer. On August 8, 2020, he hacked into the Carlsbad company and deleted more than 1,200 (out of 1,500) Microsoft Office 365 accounts that existed there.
This resulted in the company's employees losing access to services that helped them in their work, such as email, contact lists, meeting calendars, documents, video and audio conferences, as well as Teams.
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Additionally, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said in a press release: “In addition to the company, customers, vendors, and consumers were unable to reach its employees, and employees were unable to contact them.” Additionally, there was no way to inform the company’s customers about what had happened or when service would be restored. This act of sabotage caused the Carlsbad company to experience three months of disruption, while also incurring more than $560,000 in costs.
Kher, who has a brother who works as an engineer in New York, applied for a visa that was approved in December 2019, indicating a visit to the US. However, he made the trip after more than a year and was detained on January 11.
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As BleepingComputer reports, U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Huff sentenced Kher to two years in prison, three years of supervised release, and ordered him to pay a fine of $567,084 to the company he sabotaged. The amount represents the money the victim company had to pay to repair the damage it suffered.
