Developer faces decade in prison for installing kill switch in former employer's network

WTF?! It's tempting to consider getting revenge on a company for firing you. Creating a kill switch that crashes systems and locks thousands of employees out of their accounts, for example, might sound like sweet justice, but a developer who implemented this plan has been convicted of criminal sabotage and faces up to a decade in prison. In November 2007, Houston resident Davis Lu started working for power management company Eaton Corporation. His work life went well until 2018, when a company-wide corporate realignment saw his role downsized. The change included his responsibilities being reduced and his access to the firm's computer systems limited. Based on the DoJ's account, this spooked Lu into worrying that the company could eventually let him go. So, he decided to install malware onto the firm's systems that would activate if he were ever fired. The code he added created infinite loops (code designed to exhaust Java threads by repeatedly creating new threads without proper te ... Read full article.