A job everyone can relate to - especially me as it’s something I do during the working week! System Administrators are the key to any IT systems in a business. They’re the people that keep things running on a day to day basis. They’re the ones who keep everything secure and well-oiled. So it comes as a surprise when somebody who works in such a high position of responsibility goes bad. Thankfully it’s not something you hear about every day, although fairly recently I wrote an article about the sysadmin in San Francisco who failed to hand over the passwords to the mainframe! Anyhow, on to the story:

Priyavrat H Patel, a sysadmin who worked for a screwdriver company, was convicted in the US for Computer Intrusion. He will spend 6 months behind bars, pay $120,000 in restitution, and be under house arrest for a further 6 months after release, and still be answerable to the courts for another 2 and a half years to make sure he stays an upstanding citizen. Apparently, the fuel that caused Mr. Patel to remotely access the servers and bring down their email and network systems? The demon drink of course! Read the full Register article for the rest of the details.

Of course it begs the question, why weren’t the passwords changed when the guy left?