Two women sentenced for hacking ex-employers

Two US women have been ordered to pay thousands of dollars in restitution fees for separate crimes involving unauthorised access to their former workplace’s IT systems.

A 43-year-old former employee of the Better Business Bureau of Chicago and Northern Illinois, Theresa Glass, was given five years’ probation for using an employee’s password to access its systems.

Glass was the vice chair of Illinois’ Boon County Board when she committed the crime, but had worked at the bureau for two years, according to a local report.

She plead guilty in late 2010 to accessing its protected computer systems twice from her home in 2008, using her home internet connection and the password of an employee of the bureau.

Glass admitted she had downloaded around 160 files relating to two of the bureau’s customers and corrupted two files.

She was this week ordered to pay over US$9,000 in restitution for the bureau’s cost of responding to the intrusion, damage assessment fees, and restoring the data and system to its state prior to her access.  

Meanwhile, across the country, a Californian woman has been ordered to pay over US$20,000 in restitution fees for leaking business documents from her former employer.

Ming Shao was given one year probation and 60 days home detention for the damage she caused to Californian-based unified communications provider, PanTerra Networks.

She had worked for the company for two years to July 2009, but after leaving, stole information worth at least US$5,000 to the company through two compromised staff email accounts.

Shao admitted that the loss to the company could be valued at between US$10,000 and US$30,000.

An investigation began after PanTerra noticed its internal documents popping up on telecommunications industry websites.