A former software developer has been sentenced to four years in prison for sabotaging his former employer’s network after leaving the company.
Davis Lu, 55, was convicted of installing a “kill switch” on the network of his former employer by planting malicious code designed to crash its servers in the event that he was fired.
The kill switch was activated when the company terminated Lu’s employment and deactivated his credentials, causing the kill switch, “IsDLEnabledinAD” — referring to whether Lu’s account was still active in the company’s Active Directory. The incident locked out thousands of employees from accessing the company’s systems.
The Justice Department, which prosecuted the case, said Lu’s employer, which was not named but reportedly was the power tech company Eaton, said the incident caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage.
Lu was discovered in part through his internet search history, the Justice Department said, which included searches researching “methods to escalate privileges, hide processes, and rapidly delete files.”
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