Gucci Admin Gets Fired, Then Gets Even. Really Even
Written by Evan SchumanHell hath no fury like a coder scorned. A Gucci network engineer, who was fired for what prosecutors said was “abusing his employee discount,” was indicted Monday (April 4) and accused of striking back at Gucci. He allegedly deleted several virtual servers, shut down a storage area network (SAN) and deleted corporate mailboxes. But the methods 34-year-old Sam Chihlung Yin used to eke out his revenge are even more interesting: He created a non-existent employee (prior to his being fired) and then issued the vapor worker a VPN token. The government says he then “tricked” IT staff into activating it.
If the accusations are true, then the network engineer certainly engaged in decidedly naughty behavior. But in terms of engaging in proper security procedures—especially if there was any payment-card data lurking in those servers—there’s plenty of black coal to go around. (New definition of the time duration equivalent of absolute zero: The interval between Gucci’s PCI QSA hearing about this indictment and when he sends an E-mail demanding a meeting.)
Gucci’s IT staff was “tricked” into activating a VPN token for a non-existent employee? That must have been some trick. How difficult is it to look up an employee and verify with a known manager that he/she needs that access and, by the way, actually exists?
This guy’s Capt. Tuttle was granted complete admin privileges, such that entire virtual servers could be deleted. That didn’t raise any eyebrows? And this non-existent worker had this access from June through November. Six full months of admin access and no one bothered to verify that this was a legitimate manager?
By the way, this non-existent employee’s network account was created by a fired network engineer. Shouldn’t standard policy be to carefully re-examine all recent activity by fired network engineers, for precisely this type of situation?
According to the indictment and people familiar with the prosecution efforts in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, network engineer Yin—a naturalized U.S. citizen from Taiwan, who worked out of Gucci’s IT operations in Secaucus, N.J.—was fired in May 2010 for abusing his employee discount by purchasing Gucci products in substantial bulk and then reselling those products in Asia.
Before he was fired, though, he laid a foundation for revenge. In court, prosecutors said there was no known profit motive for the retaliation: just revenge.
-Marc
April 7th, 2011 at 7:06 am
I was not expecting an obscure M*A*S*H reference but it was welcome. Captain Tuttle was indeed a great man, albeit one who never said much…
April 7th, 2011 at 8:50 am
Security policies and actual practices must have been seriously flawed to allow this. It also appears that the higher level IT managers did not take their responsibilities seriously or they lacked technical competence. Security is part of their job. Gucci(and other companies) might address this example of poor management by tieing management bonuses (and salaries) to flawless performance. I am surprised that Yi (presumably) did not just transfer some hefty cash balances to a few off-shore banks and take an extended vacation abroad.
April 7th, 2011 at 10:31 am
Editor’s Note: That was a last-minute change. We did some searching and found that it was not that obscure at all. A Bing/Google/Yahoo/Wilkipedia search for Capt. Tuttle instantly found the right one so we thought if anyone was curious, the pop culture reference was easily discoverable. It’s an interesting process. Given that our audience is fairly global–one out of five readers is outside the U.S.–and the age range is all over the map, we have concluded that a healthy portion of readers won’t recognize most such references. So we either forgo them or we make sure that the meaning of the sentence is clear even if the reference is unknown.
April 8th, 2011 at 10:45 am
This Gucci story reminded me of something that happened early in my career. When I was building another technology company back in the 80’s, we came across a business that hired a developer to write a set of accounting packages for them. One module was a simple payroll application. He wrote a routine in there that verified his Social Security number on every payroll run. The nefarious “extra” routine he wrote was that if his SS# was not found (ie. he was terminated), the entire software package and related files self destructed. He was ultimately terminated and the software melted down.
April 11th, 2011 at 3:12 pm
This is a interesting story and I totally agree with Dr. P that the security management at Gucci is serously flawed and the information security governance and risk management at Gucci have not been defined to follow the industry best practices.
For the article itself, I found it is bizarre that the author specifically pointed out that Yin is a “naturalized US Citizen from Taiwan”. This kind of words provides a hint of “profiling” and should not be used.
April 11th, 2011 at 3:34 pm
LOL – another commenter’s reference to “One module was a simple payroll application” brought back memories of horror from my early days as a programmer. Payroll is never “simple!” You’re dealing with employee money, employer money, government regulations, federal & state tax reporting, and many times, union money — not simple! Sorry for the side-track but when I read this my eye started to involuntarily twitch.
April 11th, 2011 at 3:51 pm
Editor’s Note: The story did not intend to profile with the use of that description. That was from the District Attorney’s office and it was solely intended to indicate that the defendant had ties to Asia, which was offered as an explanation for why he was supposedly selling these products in Asia.
April 15th, 2011 at 2:28 pm
I find it annoying that people who have no intimate knowledge of the situation make broad sweeping comments about other’s being incompetent or flawed. It certainly seems like this shouldn’t have happened and that people should have paid more attention. However, in this world of companies expecting employees to do more for less, work crazy hours, and work what should be multiple people’s jobs, who can claim they would never make a mistake? Noone, that’s who. And if you do, well that shows a level of incompenetence and stupidity in and of itself.