Computer engineer hacks his own company

Ransom demand for 700,000$ Bitcoins

An American virtual machine (VM) expert from New Jersey is suspected of having installed a massive cyberattack against his own employer. He is said to have used his professional position to secretly create a virtual machine in the company network. 

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Mindful employees are worth their weight in gold

Attentive employees of the US industrial company noticed unusual notifications coming from an administrator account requesting password resets. This account had extensive rights to make changes to all of the company’s computers.

Shortly afterwards, colleagues, superiors and other employees received an email from an external address. The email claimed that the company network had been compromised, that all IT administrators had either been locked out or their accounts had been deleted, and that all backups had been removed. The hacker threatened to shut down an additional 40 of the company’s servers within the next ten days if the demanded ransom of €700,000 in Bitcoin was not paid.

Failed

Fortunately, the investigation by the US law enforcement authorities quickly led to the IT engineer. During a search of the company’s network, investigators discovered a hidden virtual machine that he had allegedly set up and used to gain unauthorized access to the company’s administrator account.

I guess it was nothing with the Bitcoin pocket money.