Ex-Fannie Mae employee accused of attempting to sabotage computer

A former Unix engineer at mortgage giant Fannie Mae has been accused of planting malicious computer code designed to be triggered at a later date. Also known as a computer "time bomb," reports indicate that millions of files might have been destroyed had it not been detected by another engineer by chance. Indeed, similar incidents have occurred before, though this case appears to have the potential for the most damage.

Court documents released yesterday revealed that Rajendrasinh Babubhai Makwana, 35, was indicted Tuesday by a federal court on a single charge of computer intrusion. Makwana was alleged to have embedded the malicious script in a legitimate one that ran every morning within 90 minutes of being told he was terminated for an earlier mistake at work. His computer access was only revoked hours later.

According to Computerworld, "If the malicious script had gone undiscovered, it would have disabled monitoring alerts and all log-ins, deleted the root passwords to the approximately 4,000 Fannie Mae servers, then erased all data and backup data on those servers by overwriting with zeros."

The court complaint noted that the script Makwana created would have caused "millions of dollars in damage" as well as possibly shutting down operations at Fannie Mae for at least one week. If convicted, Makwana faces a maximum of 10 years in prison.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Computerworld

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