[software] Programmer convicted of sabotaging his own software and charging for support

[ぁ Ꭷbito-]

The developer had created software for Siemens that contained malicious code that caused crashes to secure technical support; The fraud was discovered after a review of the German company's programmers

A programmer was fined and sentenced to six months in prison for inserting bugs in software, to secure work applied to the maintenance of those programs in Siemens systems. David Tinley, a 62-year-old developer in Pennsylvania, United States, worked as a contractor until 2016 for the German industrial firm developing a series of programs, whose lines of code contained a series of information.

This modality, known in the jargon as logic bombs, is based on a series of malicious instructions, which Tinley programmed to activate under a series of conditions, such as a particular date. For this reason, with each periodic failure, Siemens called the contractor and paid him to resolve the technical incident, without knowing that it was just a fraud planned by the programmer.

However, the rogue programmer's trap was discovered by Siemens when Tinley was unable to personally resolve the technical failure caused by his logic bomb. The company demanded access to the management software code to resolve an urgent order, and when trying to locate the source of the problem, Siemens programmers detected the deception.

Siemens sued Tinley for fraud because he solved non-existent problems for years, at an estimated cost of about $42,000. The programmer was accused of causing intentional damage and prosecutors asked for a 10-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine.

Although he initially rejected the accusations, Tinley pleaded guilty in the face of overwhelming evidence of fraud, and the programmer was sentenced to six months in jail and ordered to pay a fine of $7,500. In turn, he will be in custody for two years after complying with the order issued by the American justice system.

 

https://www.lanacion.com.ar/tecnologia/condenan-a-un-programador-por-sabotear-su-software-y-cobrar-el-soporte-tecnico-nid28122020/