Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Why workers sabotage office computers

An AP newswire article on MSNBC reveals that:

Corporate insiders who sabotage computers so sensitive they risk endangering national security or the economy commonly are motivated by revenge against their bosses, according to a government study released Monday.

The study, paid for by the Department of Homeland Security, examined dozens of computer-sabotage cases over six years to determine what motivates trusted insiders to attack and how their actions damage the country's most sensitive networks and data.

Update: John Paczkowski writes today over on Good Morning, Silicon Valley:


Timothy Lloyd would probably be the first person to tell you: Don't mess with a network administrator. Lloyd, an employee of high-tech measurement and instrumentation manufacturer Omega Engineering was convicted in May 2000 of planting the logic bomb that destroyed the company's manufacturing programs. The attack, inspired by Lloyd's demotion after 11 years as the Omega's chief programmer, cost the company millions of dollars and some 80 employees their jobs. Today, it figures prominently in a study by the U.S. Secret Service and CERT that found that employees who sabotage corporate networks often do so because they're angry at their bosses. According to Threat Study: Computer System Sabotage in Critical Infrastructure Sectors, 84 percent of the forty-nine instances of network sabotage it examined were motivated by a desire to seek revenge. Said Dawn Cappelli, senior member of the technical staff with CERT: "The power of a terminated employee with system administrator access should not be underestimated."

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