Indian American convicted for cyber attack

WASHINGTON, USA: An Indian American computer programmer in Maryland has been convicted by a federal jury for transmitting a malicious script to Fannie Mae's computer servers to destroy the US mortgage giant's data.

Rajendrasinh Babubhai Makwana, 36, of Montgomery County, faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. US District Judge J. Frederick Motz Tuesday scheduled sentencing for Dec 8 in Baltimore, Maryland.

Makwana, a contractor working at Fannie Mae's Urbana, Maryland facility from 2006 to Oct 24, 2008, was a UNIX engineer who worked on Fannie Mae's network of almost 5,000 computer servers.

According to testimony and evidence presented at trial, Makwana was fired Oct 24, 2008 and told to turn in all of his Fannie Mae equipment, including his laptop.

On Oct 29, 2008, a Fannie Mae senior engineer discovered a malicious script embedded in a routine programme.

A subsequent analysis of the script, computer logs, Makwana's laptop and other evidence, revealed that Makwana had transmitted the malicious code Oct 24, 2008 which was intended to execute Jan 31, 2009.

The malicious code was designed to propagate throughout the Fannie Mae network of computers and destroy all data, including financial, securities and mortgage information.