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Sysadmin tries, fails at being l337 hax0r, gets jail time

arstechnica.com — A 51-year-old sysadmin has gotten a record jail sentence after attempting (and failing) to write code that would have destroyed everything on one of his company's servers.

Who dugg this? Made popular Jan 10, 2008

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201 Comments

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  • 89vision, on 01/10/2008, -1/+257Samir: I have a question.
    Peter Gibbons: Yes?
    Samir: In... in these conjugal visits, you can have sex with women?
    Peter Gibbons: Yep, you sure can.
    Samir: OK, I'll do it.
  • MasterMWL, on 01/10/2008, -8/+202FAIL.
  • salinemist, on 01/10/2008, -0/+186You just know the other admin found it like this:

    #
    # SECRET CODE FOR REVENGE
    # last change Andy Lin 4/20/2004
    #
  • yomama6969, on 01/10/2008, -4/+136i must have put the decimal point in the wrong place, I ALWAYS do that...
  • Hipple, on 01/10/2008, -1/+113How can I make sure they'll catch me if someone else finds the code? I know, I'll make it execute on my birthday!
  • Irco, on 01/10/2008, -2/+92I was kinda sympathizing with the guy until the point where he finds the bug and decides that even though he wasn't fired...he would just fix it and let ir run. How much does it take to figure out is a bad idea...
  • ericduh, on 01/10/2008, -1/+76"hey peter man...watch out for your cornhole, bud."
  • BriscoeJr, on 01/10/2008, -2/+59Damn if feels good to be a gangster.
  • Myrix, on 01/10/2008, -5/+58HACK THE PLANET!
  • inactive, on 01/10/2008, -0/+39He should have fled the police on roller skates.
  • tyywebb, on 01/10/2008, -4/+43Dugg for the thumbnail.
  • dallashigh, on 01/10/2008, -9/+42He accidentally entered

    rf -rm /

    Worst typo of his life.
  • vibrokatana, on 01/10/2008, -4/+36Holy *****, how do you fail to destroy something you have admin on. FAILURE.
  • Hobbes24, on 01/10/2008, -6/+37n00b
  • munky100, on 01/10/2008, -1/+32if ($lay_off == "Andy") {
    DROP Cumpany_Database;
    }
  • elmetald00d, on 01/10/2008, -1/+29way to miss the Office Space reference
  • colonelpanic, on 01/10/2008, -6/+30dugg for the hackers reference.
  • ClarkNoHeart, on 01/10/2008, -0/+24Whoosh.
  • zzzpoohzzz, on 01/10/2008, -0/+24i guess maybe commenting is the only good coding habit he picked up... haha
  • tgc1, on 01/10/2008, -0/+22PC Load letter? WTF does that mean?
  • mitrovarr, on 01/10/2008, -0/+20If you can't destroy data on computers you have physical access to, you don't deserve help.
  • cbreaker, on 01/10/2008, -0/+20Only do that once you're flying around a 3D user interface over an acoustically connected modem on a pay phone.
  • reddcell, on 01/10/2008, -0/+19At first, I thought, "Well...running the code...then fixing it himself would probably mean better job security." But after taking in the whole story...he's just an idiot who skimmed the pages of a scripting book.
  • Hoov, on 01/10/2008, -4/+22EPIC FAIL.
  • schavira, on 01/10/2008, -0/+17I was thinking of Office Space the entire time I read this article.
  • adfsj, on 01/10/2008, -0/+17Apparently you don't know about the bastard operator from hell
    http://bofh.ntk.net/Bastard1.html
  • phazon88, on 01/10/2008, -4/+18*****' dugg. I love that movie.
  • Bananimal, on 01/10/2008, -2/+16You cant hack me or nothin. I got Norton.
  • Urusai, on 01/10/2008, -0/+13DROP Important_Table;
    CREATE Important_Table ( Message TEXT );
    INSERT INTO Important_Table VALUES("j00 bin haXx3d, bra");
  • Speed, on 01/10/2008, -1/+14You're like that kid whose family doesn't celebrate Christmas, so he just has to tell all the other kids at the playground that Santa isn't real, because he just can't let others have fun.
  • SEANWOOKIE, on 01/10/2008, -0/+12I bet he is going to pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
  • adfsj, on 01/10/2008, -3/+15Bash foo is weak with this one
  • Rsulliv1, on 01/10/2008, -0/+12where do you think the db lived?
  • ikcilabd, on 01/10/2008, -0/+11Samir this isn't Riyadh, they're not gonna cut your hands off if you're caught.
  • Troyjinman, on 01/10/2008, -10/+21"And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!"

    "Jeenkies!"
  • inactive, on 01/10/2008, -3/+14Brain: "Let's go , Pinky. We have to rest for tomorrow night."
    Pinky: "Why Brain? What are we doing tomorrow night?"
    Brain: "What we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world!"
    Pinky: "NARF!!!"
  • getoffmybridge, on 05/05/2009, -0/+10The most they'll do is send you to a white collar minimum security resort; we should be so lucky! You know they get conjugal visits?!


    I'm a free man, and I haven't had a conjugal visit in 6 months...
  • Todamont, on 01/10/2008, -3/+13neodymium magnets do the trick a lot faster if you have physical access to the server...
  • DocHoliday22, on 01/10/2008, -2/+11I did something similar once. Never destroyed any data, but my company boss gave me immense trouble and a headache. He just kept banging on about how anyone would love to become a sys admin and how you can pay them peanuts and they would be content. He made it his personal ambition to make it difficult to work there for no reason. He was just a *****. After a year of this, I was sacked (stayed there in the first place to support my university tuition fees). I left, and didn't say a word. The only prob for them was I knew all the passwords, logins, backup locations and literally the whole companies IT infrastructure which I wrote down for the company but they misplaced it. They kept calling me to come back and help them out, to give them the passwords etc, but I never picked up the phone. 2 months later the company went into bankruptcy and it was closed down. Serves em right.
  • 89vision, on 01/10/2008, -2/+11-r = recursion
  • kypen, on 01/10/2008, -0/+9CVS vs. SVN 2: Conflict Resolution of the Millennium
  • phazon88, on 01/10/2008, -0/+9"Hopefully he hasn't had the chance to reproduce yet"
    You must have missed the part where it said he's a "Sysadmin".
  • BrokenCircle, on 01/10/2008, -2/+11No that is why YOU do not use C++.
  • TomP, on 01/10/2008, -2/+11Of course but there would be backups right...?
  • zzzpoohzzz, on 01/10/2008, -1/+9the same reason people who attempt murder go to jail...
    if you try to do something against the law and fail... it doesn't mean "it's all good, try again!"
  • rkho, on 01/10/2008, -0/+8Poor Milton.
  • shadowofdeath15, on 01/10/2008, -5/+12Samir: (Rapping) Back up in your ass with the RESURRECTION!!!
  • monkeysaurus, on 01/10/2008, -0/+7"But your honour! I didn't *succeed* in murdering her! Why are you sending me to prison?!"
  • fedak, on 01/10/2008, -0/+7And his script would likely have done little except force one of the other sysadms to have to restore the system from backup.

    If he really wanted to screw with his employer, he would have had the script introduce difficult to detect data errors rather than just deleting whole system.
  • 2oonhed, on 01/10/2008, -1/+7The BOFH would have had dirt on the CEO & got the whole "Bad Code" episode swept under the rug.
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