A former cloud engineer has been slapped with a two-year prison sentence after he went on a cyber vendetta against his ex-employer, officials said Monday. Miklos Daniel Brody, a 38-year-old from San Francisco, was axed from his job at a city bank on March 11, 2020, and in the hours that followed, he decided to swiftly and illegally retaliate by breaking into the bank’s network systems, per the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Brody, in a fit of rage, proceeded to treacherously delete the bank’s code repositories and execute a script aimed at erasing logs. He left messages taunting his former colleagues within the bank’s code. He impersonated other employees, opening sessions in their names, according to a statement from United States Attorney Ismail J. Ramsey and Special Agent in Charge of the USSS Shawn M. Bradstreet. The rogue engineer didn't stop there—he had the gall to email a proprietary bank code, which he contributed to himself, a move valued at nearly $5,000.
The destruction didn't go unnoticed, and the cost to sort out the chaos he caused was pegged by Senior U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick at over $220,000. Brody later tried to cover his tracks, filing a bogey police report claiming his company-issued laptop was lifted from his car while he worked out at the gym, "a statement he knew to be false" he admitted later. Brody’s deceit continued when he doubled down on that lie in an interview with USSS agents following his catch in March 2021.
Judge Orrick didn't just hand Brody a jail term. He ordered the vengeful tech to cough up restitution of $529,266.37 and slapped him with a three-year supervised release to commence after serving his time behind bars. The case was a collaborative result of an investigation spearheaded by the U.S. Secret Service. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Lauren M. Harding and George O. Hageman led the charge to prosecute the case, detailed by Ramsey and Bradstreet.
