14 DAY TRIAL // 29-year-old Eric Gunnar Gisse of San Antonio, Texas, has been arrested and charged with felony breach of computer security after allegedly installing backdoors on 2,723 servers belonging to his former employer, the world renowned web hosting company Hostgator.
According to court documents obtained by Ars Technica, Gisse worked for the company as a medium-level administrator between September 2011 and February 2012.
Shortly after he was terminated, Hostgator discovered malicious applications that were set up to allow the suspect to remotely log in to the company’s servers. The backdoor app was disguised as a popular Unix tool to avoid raising any suspicion.
Gisse apparently utilized a Hostgator digital SSH key to gain root access to the systems.
Hostgator representatives said the malware plagued their systems for less than a month. They state there’s no evidence that it has been utilized to access customer content.
Ars has learned that the suspect is currently being held at the Harris County Jail on $20,000 (15,000 EUR) bond.