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Neal Cotton pleads guilty to deleting former employers data after getting fired
Incident Date: April 3 2003 Incident Location: New York City NY USA Neal Cotton, a former administrator at Manhattan-based network consulting firm Cyber City, pled guilty September 9, 2004 to felony computer intrusion charges from a 2003 attack against his employer. Cyber City provided computer and database services to businesses in the U.S. and Europe. On April 2, 2003, an executive of Cyber City informed Mr. Cotton that he would be fired. The next evening Mr. Cotton used passwords previously utilized for his job to connect to the Cyber City network over the Internet. He then damaged systems and data used by Cyber City and its clients. While Cyber City was able to restore its systems, some data was permanently lost. The complaint stated that Cyber City’s losses resulting from the attack exceeded $100,000. Mr. Cotton now faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and either a $250,000 fine or twice the losses of Cyber City. A co-worker reported that Mr. Cotton was unhappy because Cyber City had not paid him several hundred dollars for computer equipment he had returned after being terminated. Story Sources Title: Ex-Official of Local Computer Consulting Firm Pleads Guilty to Computer Attack Charge Author: Date: 9/9/2004 Publication: U.S. Attorney Press Release Publication Location: New York NY USA Publication URL: http://www.cybercrime.gov/cottonPlea.htm Do you have additional information to contribute regarding this story? If so, please email siteupdates@passwordresearch.com with the details and source.
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