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Former Fannie Mae engineer accused of malware sabotage

A former employee of US mortgage giant Fannie Mae has been arrested and charged with planting an internet security threat that would have affected the entire operations of the bank.

Rajendrasinh Babubahai Makwana, a former computer engineer with the institution, allegedly planted a time-sensitive malicious script that would have destroyed data in the bank's 4,000 servers.

The UNIX script was planted on Fannie Mae's main administrative server on the day the engineer was fired and programmed to stay dormant for three months after which it would have replaced all data with zeros.

"Had this malicious script executed, it would have caused millions of dollars of damage and reduced if not shutdown operations for a least one week," an FBI agent stated in court documents.

"If this script were executed, the total damage would include cleaning out and restoring all 4,000 servers, restoring and securing the automation of mortgages, and restoring all data that was erased."

A former employee of a Minnesota-based firm was recently charged for a similar offence, which crashed systems in the firm's 25 restaurants.

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