A UNIX engineer from India has been accused of plotting to sabotage Fannie Mae servers. [IW] (tip Sidhu via email)
What is mind boggling is the simplicity of the alleged plot ….
According to the affidavit of FBI special agent Jessica Nye, the Unix engineer who found the malicious script, identified only as SK, did so by accident. “The malicious script was at the bottom of the legitimate script, separated by approximately one page of blank lines, apparently in an effort to hide the malicious script within the legitimate script,” the affidavit states.
…. and the sheer enormity of its repercussions.
It was mere chance that a senior Unix engineer with Fannie Mae discovered a logic bomb.
The logic bomb, a malicious script designed to wipe Fannie Mae’s 4,000 servers, was allegedly placed by Rajendrasinh Makwana, an IT contractor who worked in Fannie Mae’s Urbana, Md., facility. It was set to execute on Jan. 31. Had it done so, Fannie Mae engineers expect it would have caused millions of dollars in damage and possibly shut down the government-sponsored mortgage lender for a week.
The accused UNIX engineer, Makwana, was no stranger to controversy. He was terminated earlier that week “for allegedly creating a computer script earlier that month that changed server settings without the permission of his supervisor”. After he was terminated on Oct 24th, he apparently still had network access till late that evening which is when he is alleged to have planted the logic bomb.
“On October 24, 2008, at 2:53 pm, a successful SSH (secure shell) login from IP address 172.17.38.29, with user ID s9urbm, assigned to Makwana, gained root access to dsysadmin01, the development server,” the affidavit states. “… IP address 172.17.38.29 was last assigned to the computer named rs12h-Lap22, which was [a Fannie Mae] laptop assigned to Makwana. … The laptop and Unix workstation where Makwana was able to gain root access and create the malicious script were located in his cubicle.”
The script was discovered on October 29th and scheduled to go off on January 31st. Is there a more fitting way to celebrate Indian freedom fighter M.K.Gandhi’s death anniversary than by causing mass hysteria and loss? Had the script gone off, Fannie Mae would’ve lost millions of dollars, as opposed to the billions Fannie lost in bad loans. Makwana, who is in the U.S. on a work visa, presumably a H1B or L1 (wait till Lou Dobbs gets whiff of this story), is currently out on bail. Coincidentally, Fannie Mae is also surviving on bailout money.
Read more about logic bombs here (Hope I don’t get sued by certain elements of the Indian media for quoting wikipedia).
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