Former Employee Arrested for Deleting 1200 Microsoft Accounts

Former IT contractor Dipanshu Kher was convicted by a US federal court of hacking a company's server in Carlsbad, California, and removing more than 1,200 Microsoft user accounts in retaliation for poor performance. The unnamed company was forced to cease operations for two days while repairing the damage.

According to court documents, Dipanshu Kher worked for an IT consulting firm in 2017 and 2018 and was hired by a company in Carlsbad to assist in the transition to Microsoft Office 365. The company was unhappy with Kher's work and reported it to the consulting firm. The firm removed the employee from the project and fired him shortly thereafter in May 2018.

Returning home to India, Kher hacked into the company's server in August 2018 and deleted more than 1.2 thousand of 1.5 thousand Microsoft Office 365 user accounts. As a result of deleting accounts, employees could not access e-mail, contact lists , meeting calendars, documents, corporate directories, video and audio conferencing, and virtual teams. Suppliers and consumers were also unable to contact company employees.

Kher was arrested on a flight from India to the United States in January this year. The man was sentenced to two years in prison and paid compensation to the injured company in the amount of $ 567,084, the amount the company paid to fix the problems.