The former employee of computer consulting firm pleads guilty to computer attack charge
Date: September 23, 2004Source: Computer Crime Research Center
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According to the Criminal complaint filed previously in the case, Cyber City, a local computer network consulting firm, provides a variety of computer network and database services to businesses located in Manhattan, Los Angeles, Atlanta and London. These services include computer network design, purchasing of computer hardware and software, network installation and maintenance, website production, and computer data backup and technical support. Cotton was a Cyber City field technician between 1999 and 2003. In that capacity, Cotton was provided with various passwords and user codes that gave him access to Cyber City’s computer network, both from inside Cyber City’s offices, and via remote connection over the Internet.
According to the Complaint, on April 2, 2003, an executive of Cyber City informed Cotton he would be fired from the company. On April 3, 2003, Cotton told a Cyber City coworker that he was displeased because Cyber City had failed to pay him several hundred dollars in exchange for some computer equipment Cotton had returned to Cyber City.
According to the Complaint, later that night, Cyber City experienced a computer intrusion attack on its network that wiped out files and data of several of Cyber City’s most important client companies, rendering customers’ computer networks useless, some for days, and caused some customers to lose data permanently. As the complaint states, at around the time the attack on Cyber City was perpetrated, Cotton’s co-worker observed Cotton sitting at a computer a the co-worker’s home, and later Cotton admitted to the co-worker that Cotton had attacked Cyber City’s computers.
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