New post Need visibility? Apply for a FREE post for your Startup.  Apply Here

News

Former Cisco Engineer Sentenced For Deleting 16,000 WebEx Accounts

1 Mins read

Sudhish Kasaba Ramesh, an ex-Cisco engineer, has been sentenced to 24 months in prison for accessing Cisco’s servers without authorization.

Ramesh was also ordered to pay a fine of $15,000 for shutting down more than 16,000 WebEx Teams accounts, and over 450 virtual machines in 2018.

According to the plea agreement filed in July 2020, Ramesh accessed Cisco’s cloud infrastructure hosted on Amazon Web Services, without permission, on September 24, 2018, after resigning from the company months earlier.

The 31 year old, who left the company in April, 2018 – five months before the incident, destroyed servers that hosted infrastructure for the Cisco WebEx Teams service in the process.

During his unauthorized access, he deployed a code from his Google Cloud Project account that resulted in the deletion of 456 virtual machines for Cisco’s WebEx Teams application, which provides video meetings, video messaging, file sharing, and other collaboration tools,” the Department of Justice said in a press release.

As a result of his actions, more than 16,000 WebEx Teams accounts was shut down for two weeks.

As a result of the damage, Cisco said it ended up spending $2.4 million to cover customer refunds and time spent by employees to restore service back to normal.

Although, Ramesh apologized for his actions, the former Cisco engineer did not explained the motive behind him deleting Cisco’s servers.

Ramesh is currently out of custody, and expected to begin his sentence in February, 2021.

Although, he has a green card application pending, as well as an H1 visa, Ramesh also faces deportation to his native country of India following his sentence.

Cisco said that the incident did not expose any of its customers’ data, and service was restored to every affected customer as soon as the issue was fixed.

Don’t miss any tech news ever!

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.

777 posts

About author
When I'm not reading about tech, I'm writing about it, or thinking about the next weird food combinations to try. I do all these with my headphones plugged in, and a sticky note on my computer with the words: "The galaxy needs saving, Star Lord."
Articles
Related posts
News

Google Begins Rolling Out Gemini AI Integration in Google Messages Beta on Some Devices

2 Mins read
Google has reportedly begun rolling out a beta integration of its conversational AI, Gemini, directly within the messaging app. Get ready to…
News

WhatsApp Testing Feature to Allow Users Set HD Photo and Video as Default Uploads

2 Mins read
Attention photo and videography enthusiasts who use WhatsApp! The wait for effortless high-quality media sharing might be nearing its end. According to…
News

MTN Group to invest billions in boosting Data and Fintech services across Africa

1 Mins read
In a move to solidify its position in the rapidly evolving digital landscape, MTN Group, the telecommunications giant, has announced plans to…
Newsletter Subscription

🤞 Don’t miss any update!

We don’t spam! Read more in our privacy policy

Join our Telegram channel here - t.me/TechpadiAfrica

Leave a Reply