A disgruntled former data manager who hacked his boss’ PowerPoint presentation so it showed a pornographic image has been given a 2-year suspended prison sentence and 100 hours of community service by a judge in the US.
The event occurred in September 2009 as the Baltimore Substance Abuse Systems (BSAS) chief executive Greg Warren was giving a presentation on a 64-inch screen to city officials on his organisation’s drug rehabilitation programmes.
Suddenly, the PC shut down and rebooted, revealing the image of a naked woman on the screen, planted there remotely it later turned out by 52 year-old Walter Powell, a data support manager who had been fired only days earlier by BSAS.
Powell was said to have used his access to the organisation’s systems to steal the passwords of at least five other BCAS employees as they worked. Over a 32-day period, Powell accessed the BSAS network over 100 times, it was reported.
He also accessed the chief executive’s email account, forwarding confidential emails to others and composing and sending a further fictitious email to a public distribution list.
The attack is reported to have cost the organisation $80,000 (£50,000) to audit systems and put in place better security.
