Developer gets 4 years for activating network “kill switch” to avenge his firing

In a striking case of workplace retaliation, a former developer has received a four-year prison sentence for creating a 'kill switch' that disabled access to a corporate network following his dismissal. Davis Lu, a 55-year-old Chinese citizen living in Houston, was found guilty of intentionally damaging protected computers, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice. Lu had been employed at Eaton Corp. for around 11 years when his role was significantly diminished during a 2018 restructuring. Believing that his termination was imminent, he began embedding various types of harmful code into the company's systems. Among these, he utilized names drawn from Japanese and Chinese languages—'Hakai' meaning destruction and 'HunShui' signifying lethargy—to label his malicious creations. These programs created endless loops, deleting employee profiles, blocking legitimate logins, and causing system failures. The most severe form of sabotage came from a piece of code that Lu named after himself: 'IsDLEnabledinAD,' which the DOJ described as a mechanism that would lock all users out if his access was revoked. This kill switch was activated automatically when Lu was placed on leave and instructed to return his laptop in 2019, effectively locking out thousands of users across the globe without warning. Eaton Corp. eventually traced the source of the disruptions back to Lu’s user ID while investigating the infinite loops, leading them to a server that only Lu had access to. This discovery revealed the full extent of the malicious activities Lu had undertaken. The company incurred significant costs in restoring its network, as detailed by Matthew Galeotti, acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s criminal division, during the sentencing announcement.