Techie's revenge lands her in jail

By Liam Tung on Dec 10, 2010 9:25 AM
Filed under Networking

Changes firewall password.

A 30-year-old IT worker at a Florida-based health centre was this week sentenced to 19 months in a US federal prison for hacking - and then locking - her former employer's IT systems.

Four days after being fired from the Suncoast Community Health Centers' for insubordination, Patricia Marie Fowler exacter her revenge by hacking the centre's systems, deleting files, changing passwords, removing access to infrastructure systems, and tampering with pay and accrued leave rates of staff.

The initial value of the damage she had caused was estimated to be US$5,000.

However Fowler was this week ordered to pay restitution of US$17,243.01 - a revised estimated value of the damage she had caused.

Fowler's attack on the company's firewall, which had caused a "lockout", took Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) three months to resolve.

In July, the FBI secured an admission from Fowler that she had hacked the centre's systems, at which point she handed over the new password.

5 comments in this discussion

"Oh yeah, by the way, Wikileaks is a CIA PSY-OPS operation by that global beloved institution called the CIA. What a joke. If you understand the ruling elite and their "false face", you'll ..."

By Ubiquitous1953

Tags

network, firewall, lockout, change, passwords, employer, techie

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Comments: 5

BaysNet Dec 10, 2010 9:38 AM	privileged user IT Systems access requires a control solution that provides life-cycle management of share/privileged accounts. This sort of "insider threat" should be mangaged by a proper password management system particularly if you also use outsourced contractors as well.
Psuedo Dec 13, 2010 2:13 PM	Two words - Risk Management - obviously not conducted by the CIO of that organisation.
ejobrien Dec 14, 2010 12:57 PM	"Fowler's attack on the company's firewall, which had caused a "lockout", took Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) three months to resolve." And yet the damage estimate was only $US17,243.01. How does that work? Surely the court costs alone would be higher than that.
Ubiquitous1953 Dec 18, 2010 3:23 AM	To attack a firewall takes balls. She's obviously more sophisticated in her knowledge of computer thingy stuff than her compatriots. Oh well, another smart person, pissed off, goes down the tube of " Orwellian Mindset" .
Ubiquitous1953 Dec 18, 2010 3:29 AM	Oh yeah, by the way, Wikileaks is a CIA PSY-OPS operation by that global beloved institution called the CIA. What a joke. If you understand the ruling elite and their "false face", you'll understand Wikileaks. Ha, cant stop laughing at the redactions and that the NYT had anyting to do with it. As you know, the NYT is an Israeli fifth column.