Fannie Mae, a mortgage finance company could have could have lost its data had the logic bomb planted by a former employee worked. Rajendrasinh Makwan who worked as a Unix engineer with the company till October 2008 had planted the logic bomb. It could have destroyed the company's 4000 servers by either destroying or altering the data and thus resulted in a shut down for at least a week. The logic bomb works as a malicious code is entered into the system which sabotages the data.
The logic bomb was embedded with legitimate code and set to launch at 9 a. m. Jan. 31. But an alert engineer at Fannie Mae spotted the Malware before it could cause damage.
Makwana, a native of India on a U. S. work visa, was working with the company on contractual basis since the beginning of 2006. His services were terminated on Oct. 24 due to a scripting error he had made earlier in the month.
However he still had access to the computer systems 10 p. m. that evening. He utilized used his extended legitimate access to clear out all logs that revealed his access to the server, eliminating any "footprint" of his malicious activities on Oct. 24. Thereafter he gained launch code that would allow him access to Fannie Mae's servers remotely. He developed the malicious code on Oct. 25 i. e a day after his termination.
This would have cost the company a huge loss and given a chance to Makwana to avenge his termination.
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Fannie Mae : Very disturbed with this Hacking News
Very disturbed with this kind of news against our Country, there is not much difference in Terrorists and these foreign poisonous “Hackers” who just want to hurt America in every which way possible, look at what we doing we pay them double the money (contracting) and what we get in return? An “Attack” !! This is a major “Attack” on our trust, our openness in H-1 Visas, our generosity and most important our Freedom and our way of life. Tens of thousands of American have lost their Jobs of many years in every decade and recession periods, and tens of thousands of American from small town America have lost their jobs to these foreign (Indian) “Call Centers” but No American has ever did something like this to their employer but a foreigner “Indian” has done this to all us. Mr. President please deliver your promise, close these foreign “Call Centers” and Stop handing out H-1 Visas, we already have IT training Centers here in the US, lets pay average Americans from small America to get trained and lets replace these expensive Foreigner Contracts with perm full time American trustworthy employees.
We need to hire Americans and the likes of US Citizens, who have a passion to build this country, love our open hearted nation and work with professional ethics and I think Mr Rajendrasinh Babubhai Makwana didn't fit that criteria, normally you could spot such people with social behavior at work especially the type that exhibits isolation from most and grouping with their own kind ! ..You know what I mean :)
Jeff
God Bless America