Slashdot Mirror
Man Threatened Company With Cyber Attack To Fire Employee and Hire Him Instead (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A North Carolina judge sentenced a Washington man this week to 37 months in prison for threatening a company with attacks unless they fire one of their employees and hire him instead. According to court documents obtained by Bleeping Computer, on April 18, 2016, Todd Michael Gori sent an email to TSI Healthcare, a healthcare software vendor based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Gori, a 28-year-old resident of Wenatchee, Washington, threatened the company with cyber attacks by him and unnamed friends if the company did not fire one of its employees and hire him instead.
"I am giving you, TSI healthcare two choices," Gori wrote in the email. "You either lay-off [identity redacted] and replace her with me, an operator 100x better that she is oppressing. Or I will take out your entire company along with my comrades via a cyber attack. Again you have two choices. Get ride of her and hire me. Or slowly be chipped away at until you are gone. She is a horrible operator that can only manage 2 screens with an over inflated travel budget. I fly at least 10x as many places as this loon on 1/5th of the budget," the email reads. "I have petitioned for a job with you guys with her as a reference as I am a felon with computer skills and need assistance getting work as technically I have 'no work history'. She declines everytime and burries me even further."
"I am giving you, TSI healthcare two choices," Gori wrote in the email. "You either lay-off [identity redacted] and replace her with me, an operator 100x better that she is oppressing. Or I will take out your entire company along with my comrades via a cyber attack. Again you have two choices. Get ride of her and hire me. Or slowly be chipped away at until you are gone. She is a horrible operator that can only manage 2 screens with an over inflated travel budget. I fly at least 10x as many places as this loon on 1/5th of the budget," the email reads. "I have petitioned for a job with you guys with her as a reference as I am a felon with computer skills and need assistance getting work as technically I have 'no work history'. She declines everytime and burries me even further."
Without any other supporting evidence, It seems like there are some mental deficits in play. I'm not even going to grace the preceding statement by calling it a hypothesis, however, on the surface it looks like the only reason the story is relevant to /. is because the label "cyber" has been attached to a generic threat from a person who might be better off in an in-patient care facility instead of prison.
He is not trustworthy. I will not employ a person with a questionable character. No company wants that (except from the upper management). Interestingly the US population thought a narcissist asshole with limited intellect but unlimited self-interest will be beneficial for the country.
I think that every healthcare company in the country should hire an illiterate extorting felon to manage their sensitive information and fire the literate. Can't imagine where he got the idea (cough Trump cough).
Your brain is so small you can't remember Hillary's top secret email server, managed at about that level of security. cough cough cough cough cough (that's just Hillary having another coughing fit)
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
To me, this story is mostly a symptom that our society needs a bit more (probably, a lot more) mental health care. I don’t mean it in a disparaging way. I feel sincere pity for him. The guy wrote that he is a felon, so he’s probably done jail time; and his writing reveals obvious (and serious) psychological problems. I find it unfortunate that we cannot do better with (or rather, for) people like that. Mental health troubles can be debilitating (particularly, socially debilitating) and lead too many to jail.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the value of personal responsibility. For example, I might get offended if someone bumps into me. But not if it’s a blind person! Unfortunately, psychological problems are (comparatively) more difficult to recognise, understand and (importantly for the legal system) confirm (and measure), so we often handle them using the expedient and cheaper device, the discard pile. This might come from insufficient scientific understanding of those conditions, and limited medical ability to treat them. But I’m afraid that it may also reflect a lack of compassion and generosity on our part, and probably a lack of vision and good judgement as well, since we’re likely ignoring a good investment.