Upset after being fired, Indian techie in Singapore hacks former company’s system, causing SGD 918K loss

An Indian techie named Kandula Nagaraju, 39, has been sentenced to jail by a Singapore court docket after he hacked into his former employer company’s system and triggered losses amounting to SGD 918,000. He did this as a result of he was very upset after being fired by the corporate.

Reporting on the matter, the Singapore-based information outlet CNA stated that Nagaraju had hacked into the ex-employer’s pc programs and deleted 180 digital servers. On Monday, he was sentenced to 2 years and eight months in jail for unauthorised entry to pc materials.

The convicted techie used to work with the digital and tech providers firm NCS, which terminated his contract in October 2022. His final day at work was November 16, 2022.

While the explanation cited for the contract termination was poor work efficiency, Nagaraju felt “confused and upset” as a result of he believed that he had made “good contributions” to NCS.

Unable to seek out one other job instantly in Singapore, he returned to India. For a number of months, he stayed in India, throughout which period — in January 2023 — he started to hack into the NCS pc system utilizing his private laptop computer. He was significantly concentrating on 180 digital servers, which he had entry to whereas he labored with NCS. These digital servers have been utilized by NCS for quality-testing new software program and packages earlier than launch, as a part of its providers.

Even after he returned to Singapore in February 2023 with a brand new job, Nagaraju continued accessing the NCS system; he grew to become an NCS worker’s roommate and shared a Wi-Fi community.

In March 2023, he accessed the NCS system, and ran a pc script that might delete the 180 digital servers.

The firm did not troubleshoot, and suspected some type of sabotage. In April 2023, the corporate took the case to the Singapore Police Force. Through its personal investigations, NCS had discovered some suspicious IP addresses, which have been handed over to the police.

Soon sufficient, the probe led the police to Nagaraju, and his laptop computer had all of the proof of unauthorised accessing of the NCS system and the server deletion script. The precise quantity of losses suffered by NCS due to Nagaraju’s hacking and server deletion was SGD 917,832.