Disgruntled Employee-turned-Hacker Gets a Year in Prison

A former senior database administrator for GEXA Energy in Houston, Texas, was sentenced today to a year in prison for hacking into his former employer’s computer network.

Steven Jinwoo Kim of Houston pleaded guilty last November to one count of intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorization and recklessly causing damage. In addition to his prison sentence, Kim was also ordered to pay $100,000 in restitution to the company.

According to court documents, on Feb. 5, 2008, GEXA Energy fired Kim and revoked all his administrative rights and access to the company’s computer network. In pleading guilty, Kim admitted to using his home computer to connect to the GEXA Energy computer network and a database containing information on approximately 150,000 customers. While connected to the computer network, Kim caused damage to the computer network and the customer database by entering various Oracle database commands. He also copied and saved to his home computer a database file containing personal information on the GEXA Energy customers. According to court documents, Kim’s actions caused a $100,000 loss to GEXA Energy.

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