Insider Cyberattacks: 8 Stories That Made History

Employees and executives who become dangerous thieves of information or saboteurs of IT systems. These are the 8 most famous stories of insider cyberattacks, where the protagonists go down in history and, in the worst cases, remain behind prison bars for life.

Terry Child – Passwords? What Passwords?

In 2008, network administrator Terry Child changed the passwords of routers and switches on the FibreWAN network and later refused to disclose them to his supervisors. This action blocked the networks and caused serious trouble for the San Francisco Department of Telecommunications and Information Services. Child was arrested and convicted.

Jerome Kerviel – The 7.2-Billion-Dollar Man

Kerviel was behind a 7.2-billion-dollar exploit against Societe Generale, one of the largest French banks. Kerviel became the most hated Frenchman, and his mugshot became a symbol of the misfortunes of the financial sector and the global economy.

After leaving prison, Kerviel began working with an IT security and systems development company.

Shawn Carpenter – Improvised Private Investigator

In 2004, Sandia National Laboratories suffered a series of hacker attacks. Shawn Carpenter, then an IT security analyst for Sandia, decided to start a private investigation. He discovered that a Chinese group had stolen U.S. government documents from the company's servers. Carpenter shared the information with the U.S. military and the FBI. In response, Sandia fired him in 2005 for “inappropriate use of confidential information”.

In 2007, however, a jury recognized his merits and awarded him 4.7 million dollars, making him a national hero.

Bruce Gabbard – Unauthorized Wiretapping

In 2007, Wal-Mart stated that for four months in 2006 one of its technicians, Gabbard, monitored and recorded phone conversations between a Wal-Mart public-relations employee and a New York Times reporter. Gabbard was fired and sanctioned by his supervisors, who reported that the recordings had never been authorized by the company.

Gabbard is currently the owner of Forensic Survey, a computer-investigation company.

Sergey Aleynikov – Thief of Golden Code

Sergey Aleynikov, a former high-level programmer at Goldman Sachs, attempted to steal code that would allow fast, high-volume transactions in commodities and stock markets.

Aleynikov was arrested, but left jail on bail while declaring himself innocent.

Robert Hanssen – The Traitor

Robert Hanssen's story sounds like a film: an FBI agent who worked as a spy for the Soviet Union and also for present-day Russia. He was betrayed by his PDA, where he hid stolen information. He is now in prison with a life sentence without parole for high treason.

Rajendrasinh Makwana – A Premeditated Attack

Rajendrasinh Makwana was indicted by federal authorities for planting a logic bomb on Fannie Mae servers. On January 31, 2009, the code would have disabled monitoring alerts and all logins, erased root passwords for about 400 servers, removed all data and overwritten backup data with zeros. It would have caused millions of dollars in damage, but unfortunately for him it was stopped by an employee who discovered it by chance. Makwana was arrested and later released on 100,000-dollar bail and was awaiting trial.

Arthur Riel – “It Is for a Good Cause”

In 2003, an IT executive at Morgan Stanley, Arthur Riel, spied on his colleagues' emails and came across unethical business situations: conflicts of interest and sexual jokes about other MS executives. Riel always maintained that he had done his duty, but those he spied on did not think the same. The executive was fired and sued, but won the case and was hired by an email security company.