Quote:A former IT contractor has been sentenced to two years in prison after hacking into a company’s server and deleting the majority of its employees’ Microsoft Office 365 (O365) accounts. The incident resulted in the company completely shutting down for two days.
 
The 32-year-old contractor, Deepanshu Kher, was initially employed by an unnamed IT consulting firm from 2017 through May 2018. In 2017, the consulting firm was hired by an unnamed company in Carlsbad, Calif. to assist with its migration to a O365 environment – and sent Kher to assist with the project.
 
However, according to the Department of Justice (DoJ) on Monday, the company was dissatisfied with Kher’s work. Kher was pulled from the project in 2018 and fired from the consulting firm a few months later.
 
On Aug. 8, 2018, Kher then hacked into the company’s server and deleted over 1,200 of its 1,500 O365 user accounts. According to the DoJ, the attack affected the bulk of the company’s employees and completely shut down the company.
 
“Employees’ accounts were deleted – they could not access their email, their contacts lists, their meeting calendars, their documents, corporate directories, video and audio conferences, and virtual Teams environment necessary for them to perform their jobs,” according to the DoJ. “Outside the company, customers, vendors and consumers were unable to reach company employees (and the employees were unable to reach them). No one could inform these buyers what was going on or when the company would be operational again.”
 
Even after those two days, issues persisted for the employees of the company. For instance, employees were not receiving meeting invites, their contact lists could not be completely rebuilt, and they could no longer access certain folders that they previously had access to.