Angry IT Admin Jailed After Attempting To Teach Employees Harsh Lesson

You know, I don’t work in IT (quite obviously, given the fact that you’re reading this article), but I’ve got to say that it sounds like a pretty stressful line of work. So much can go wrong all the time, seemingly with little or no warning, and with consequences. Many, many consequences. 

That said, I’d also say that there’s ways of dealing with frustrations that don’t involve destroying your company’s servers. But as reported by PC Gamer, that’s exactly what one database administrator has done, and he’s been jailed for seven years as a result.

If you've ever wondered how servers are installed in the first place, look no further than the video below.

Han Bing, who worked for Chinese real estate brokerage company Lianjia (formerly named Homelink), reportedly logged into the company’s financial system and deleted the whole thing. Four servers were destroyed, and none of it could be recovered, leaving the company’s operations at a standstill and employees without pay for an extended period of time. 

Why? Apparently, Bing’s colleagues suggested that he’d felt undervalued at work after raising concerns about the security of the financial system, and getting brushed off by his seniors. Reportedly, this resulted in Bing arguing with his other co-workers. 

Regardless of whether the attack was driven by revenge or the desire to prove a point, Bing left quite a lot of evidence behind that linked him to the crime. For a start, he was one of only five people who had access to the system databases, and the only one of those five who refused to hand over the password to his laptop when the investigation began. Later, electronic forensic analysis of the server logs, combined with CCTV footage, linked Bing’s computer to the crime.

As well as seven years in prison, he also had to pay a hefty $30,000 in amends, as a result of other employees being left without pay for a while. Needless to say, completely derailing your company’s operations has repercussions - please, don’t try it at home.