14 DAY TRIAL // When I first got a hold of this piece of news I thought that it must be just another case of a fired security expert that goes berserk on his ex-employers?it's far more than that though. Yung-Hsun Lin used to be a system administrator at Medco Health Solutions. For fear that he would get fired, he wrote and planted a logic bomb on a computer, that could cripple the whole network, as seen on Information Week. Now this might not sound much, but read on and you will see that it is.
This malicious code that he used was supposed to take down a part of a program. People using the targeted software would no longer be able to see if the drugs they prescribe for one patient go against a previous prescription. Some people mustn't take certain medicines, if they already are on other drugs. Now, suppose such a "drug versus drug" conflict appears, people could get seriously hurt. I'm no doctor, but I sure know that taking the wrong pills might make you even sicker, or even kill you. So, now, I guess that you realize how severe this would have been.
The good part is that this logic bomb was something that needed a sort of detonation, but it has been disclosed by the IT dept, before it went off. The fact that this would stain the firm's reputation and that it could make them lose a lot of money is pretty bad, but it does not compare to harming human life. I have no idea if the hacker ever thought that he is putting people's lives in danger, but he is now trialed for his deeds. He pleaded guilty in front of the court and might get as much as 10 years.
It's one thing to hack a computer, take down a network and things like that, but doing what he did is just outrageous, if you ask me!