Costly Insider Security Breaches

A self-taught file system administrator had worked eleven years for Omega Engineering, a government contractor to NASA and the U.S. Navy, when he learned that he would be let go in a few days. The administrator inserted six simple lines of DOS code into the mainframe computer and borrowed the backup tapes. A few weeks after leaving the company, the program deleted every one of company’s mainframe files. The loss value was estimated at $10-12 million. The company never recovered. Here, in their simplicity, are the six lines of code. 7/30/96 F: F:LOGINLOGIN 12345 CDPUBLIC