It looks like a former engineer at the mortgage finance company Fannie Mae was found responsible for planting a “logic bomb” that would have shut down the company for at least a week, by destroying all 4,000 of its servers, costing the company millions in lost productivity and damages.

His name is Rajendrasinh Makwana, and he worked as a Unix engineers from the beginning of 2006 until October 2008. He was indicted for sabotaging the mortgage lender’s computer network by entering malicious code known as a logic bomb, which would have ultimately resulted in destroying and altering the entirety of data on Fannie Mae’s servers.

The logic bomb was set to detonate at 9 am in January 31, but it was impeded when another Fannie Mae engineers discovered the malware several days after it was planted. Due to a scripting error he made in earlier October, Makwana was terminated, but his access to the computer systems did not immediately end, retaining full access rights until at least 10 pm that evening.

Of course, he used his extended legitimate access to clear out all logs that revealed his access to the server, therefore eliminating any footprint of his malicious activities on October 24. He launched a code that allowed him access to Fannie Mae’s servers remotely and then developed the malicious code on October 25, the day after his termination.

An examination of Makwana’s e-mails in the days before he created the malicious code indicated that he instructed relatives in India not to return to the US. Companies must anticipate insiders that pose threats, and that’s because the economy worsens and disgruntled or laid off employees seeks some kind of retribution. Companies will need to automate their access control.