Security News > 2021 > March > Resentful employee deletes 1,200 Microsoft Office 365 accounts, gets prison
A former IT consultant hacked a company in Carlsbad, California, and deleted almost all its Microsoft Office 365 accounts in an act of revenge that has brought him two years of prison time.
More than 1,200 user accounts were removed in this act of sabotage, causing a complete shutdown of the company's operations for two days.
Deepanshu Kher was working for an IT consulting firm that sent him to a client to help with migrating to Microsoft Office 365 services.
On August 8, he hacked into the Carlsbad company and deleted over 1,200 of the 1,500 Microsoft Office 365 accounts present in the environment.
"Outside the company, customers, vendors and consumers were unable to reach company employees," notes a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice.
U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Huff sentenced Kher to two years in prison, three years of supervised release, and paying $567,084 to the Carlsbad company he had sabotaged.