Small businesses have been warned to raise their awareness of
internal IT security threats and tighten exit procedures for
temporary staff following the conviction of a hacker for deleting
business-critical data.
A computer engineer received an 18-month prison sentence last week
for hacking into a firm's computer systems and wiping data
following an argument over an unpaid bill for £75.
In what is believed to be the first such prosecution in the UK,
Stephen Carey, 28, was jailed for attacking Sussex-based sheet
metal firm RP Duct Work after the company refused to pay him for
upgrading its computer systems. The firm said the work was
unsatisfactory.
Carey gave himself unauthorised remote access and later deleted
three years' worth of drawing files, causing up to £50,000 worth of
damage and forcing the company to shut down its computer
systems.
RP Duct Work refused to comment on the matter. "We just want to
forget about it," said a spokesman for the firm.
Detective constable Mark Castle of Sussex Police, who led the
investigation, said that although the police were able to recover
the information it was in "an unworkable state" as all the files
had been taken from their relevant folders and directories and
jumbled together.
The incident has raised the issue of poor security practices in
small businesses and of how important it is to back up data
effectively. "The big lesson here is to enforce a strict, daily
off-site back-up regime with at least two people responsible for it
and to monitor any remote access to systems very closely," said Ed
Wilding, of computer forensic investigations consultancy
Datagenetics International.
Wilding said the case was "pretty much a first" in the UK and it
raised the need for companies, especially small-and medium-sized
enterprises, to pay more attention to the threat of malicious acts
and to monitor employee exit procedures and contract staff more
closely.
Police working with BT traced the crime trail back to Carey's PC by
identifying his phone number. Carey had used it on nine separate
occasions to connect to the firm's analogue data line, used in the
attack.
"[Carey] tried to cover his tracks by reinstalling his operating
system but we still found footprints within the system using
forensic programming," said Castle.