14 DAY TRIAL // A former IT consultant has plead guilty to accusations of impairing a critical SCADA system belonging to an oil-exploitation company. The man used multiple administrative accounts to tamper with the system after the company rejected his request for permanent employment.
Mario Azar, 28, of Upland, California, worked as an IT technician for Long Beach-based Pacific Energy Resources Ltd. (PER). The company operates three offshore, gas- and oil-extraction platforms, which are connected to the mainland through several pipelines.
Azar's temporary job was to assist in setting up a Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system for the company. SCADA systems are used by power- and water-distribution plants, gas and oil refineries or other manufacturing facilities, to monitor and control industrial processes.
The system Azar worked on enabled PER to communicate with its offshore platforms and monitor the pipelines for any hazardous leaks. Because his temporary work contract was about to expire, on 8 May, 2008, the IT consultant filed a request for permanent employment.
Upset that the company chose not to honor his request, Azar used his still-active credentials to log in and tamper with the SCADA system. He was indicted back in March for knowingly transmitting programs, information, codes, and commands, in order to impair the integrity and availability of data, a program, a system, and information on a computer system.
The FBI announced yesterday that, on September 14, Mario Azar pleaded guilty to intentionally damaging a computer system used in interstate and foreign commerce and faced ten years in prison. His sentencing is scheduled for December 7 in the United States District Court of Los Angeles.
In order to avoid breaches caused by disgruntled former employees, security experts warn that companies should disable their account when they are being let go. Back in January, we reported that a former IT admin almost destroyed data on all servers belonging to mortgage giant Fannie Mae, after being forced to part with the company. In July, the FBI arrested a programmer for stealing proprietary software code used for automated stock trading during his last days as a Goldman Sachs employee.