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from the credentials-still-worked-FIVE-MONTHS-after-he-left? dept.
Sudhish Kasaba Ramesh, who worked at Cisco from July 2016 to April 2018, admitted in a plea agreement with prosecutors that he had deliberately connected to Cisco's AWS-hosted systems without authorization in September 2018 – five months after leaving the manufacturer. He then proceeded to delete virtual machines powering Cisco's WebEx video-conferencing service.
"During his unauthorized access, Ramesh admitted that he deployed a code from his Google Cloud Project account that resulted in the deletion of 456 virtual machines for Cisco's WebEx Teams application, which provided video meetings, video messaging, file sharing, and other collaboration tools," the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California said in a statement.
According to prosecutors, Ramesh's actions resulted in the shutdown of more than 16,000 WebEx Teams accounts for up to two weeks, which cost Cisco roughly $1.4m in employee time for remediation and over $1m in customer refunds.
[...] According to a court document[*], Ramesh is in the US on an H-1B visa and has a green card application pending.
[...] Ramesh faces up to five years in the clink and a fine of $250,000 when he is sentenced, an event scheduled for December.
[*] STIPULATION AND (PROPOSED) ORDER CONTINUING DATE FOR ENTRY OF PLEA AGREEMENT (PDF)
(Score: 3, Informative) by canopic jug on Tuesday September 01 2020, @03:37AM
Just watch Cisco equate "unauthorised access" with "hacking" and leave it to the unwashed masses (i.e. their customers) to draw their own conclusions.
Yep. And a few hours later, we fine the corporate megaphones posing as trade press exclaming, "Former Employee Admits Hacking, Damaging Cisco Systems [securityweek.com]". In that article, they lead with "A former Cisco employee has pleaded guilty to hacking charges related to him accessing the networking giant’s systems and causing damage."
That is ridiculous.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.