Navy Contractor Arrested For Sabotage Of Computer System

From GovExec:

A Navy contractor was arrested Monday in connection with planting malicious code on a government computer system, in what he told investigators was an attempt to smear the reputation of another contractor who had won out in a bid competition.

Richard Sylvestre until this week was a systems administrator at the Navy's European Planning and Operations Center in Naples, Italy, a sub-surface vessel safety center that tracks the location of ships, submarines and underwater objects to prevent collisions, according to a criminal complaint filed by the Justice Department at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, located in Norfolk, Va.

Sylvestre owned and worked for Ares Systems International, a software and systems engineering firm that employed one other administrator at the center. SAIC Corp. recently won a contract to provide a third network administrator at the center, the filing said, beating Ares, which also had submitted a bid to fill the position.

According to the complaint, filed by a special agent with the Navy Criminal Investigative Service, two network computers at the center went offline unexpectedly on May 21. Both Ares contractors were away on travel and the SAIC systems administrator, who had remained onsite, found the computers had been programmed with malicious code that deleted critical operating system files. Further investigation revealed similar code on three other computers, including a network server, although that code had not yet executed.

Later, investigators used computer records and interviews to trace the malicious code back to Sylvestre, who had apparently programmed them to run at a future date shortly before his departure. Sylvestre's colleague at Ares said his boss had made what appeared to be a joke that he should set up a program to operate while the two were away that would make the SAIC contractor "look bad."

When confronted, Sylvestre admitted that he had set up the code for that reason, though he denied any intention to cause a collision by any vessels relying on the system for data on underwater obstacles, according to the filing.

Sylvestre is charged with knowingly damaging a protected computer and causing losses that would have exceeded $5,000 in one year. A trial date has not yet been set, but a Justice Department statement said he faces a maximum of 10 years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000 and a period of post-release supervision if found guilty.