I have been in the I.T. field for the last 3 years. Sure it hasn't been very long, but in that time I have seen and heard a lot of things. I have heard a number of stories of disgruntled employees wiping out months of data when they quit. I have heard of database administrators, and systems administrators leaving back doors into the company and causing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of lost data. I have been disgruntled a time or two and felt like perhaps doing the same thing as well (but I do have some self control).
Well apparently a 51 year old systems administrator in New Jersey was disgruntled enough to write a script that was supposed to wipe out a major medical database. This loser of a sys admin's name is Andy Lin (His full name is Yung-Hsun Lin). The reason Mr. Lin wrote the code was because his company, Medco Health Solutions, was planning on laying off four systems administrators. He planted the code on one of their major database servers as a preemptive measure in case he was one chosen to be laid off. It turned out that he wasn't one that did get laid off, but he decided to let the code go anyway.
The problem was he sucks as a script writer, because the code didn't work. I guess no one told him that maybe he should test it first. He was caught by another systems administrator on his team, and the rest is history.
He was just sentenced this week to 30 months in jail, and has to pay Medco $81,200 in restitution.
If you are a systems administrator, and are feeling just a little unappreciated, don't go the route of Mr. Lin. The trouble you will get in will not only be monetary, but it also prove to be a real pain in the ass... Literally. (Jail, get it?)
Jan 28, 2008
Don't Be Crashing No Servers!
12:04 AM
Paul B
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