History Of Logic Bomb

 Donald Burleson

               Burleson worked for a security brokerage and insurance company . One of the first recorded cases of computer sabotage in the nation.In September 1987, Donald Burleson, a 40-year-old programmer at the Fort Worth based insurance company, USPA, was fired for allegedly being quarrelsome and difficult to work with. Two days later, approximately 168,000 vital records erased themselves from the company computers via “time bomb”. 

               A logic bomb had gone off, wreaking havoc with the files that were the lifeblood of USPA! Burleson was caught after investigators went back through several years worth of system files. They found that two years before he was fired Burleson had planted a logic bomb which lay dormant until he triggered it on the day of his dismissal. He became the first person in America to be convicted of "harmful access to a computer.Burleson’s logic bomb deleted files on his computer and then deleted itself.

               Burleson appealed and made only one $100 payment on the fine. In September 1988, a Texas state court convicted Donald Gene Burleson of "harmful access to a computer," sentenced him to seven years of probation, and forced him to pay USPA & IRA, his former employer, $11,800 (the earlier fine of $11,226 plus interest). Considering what Burleson had done, the sentence was rather light.

  

Roger Duronio

                  A disgruntled former UBS Paine Webber systems administrator convicted in July was sentenced today to 97 months in federal prison for securities and computer fraud connected to his use of a malicious code, known as a “logic bomb” that disrupted the company’s operations and caused more than $3 million in damage and repair costs to the UBS computer network, U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie announced.

                 He sought to do financial harm to a company and to profit from that, but he failed on both counts. The jury recognized this, and the judge did too by imposing a sentence at the top of the applicable range.”On July 19, a jury in its fourth day of deliberations found Duronio guilty of one count of securities fraud and one count of fraud and related activity in connection with computers (computer fraud).

                 The jury acquitted Duronio of two counts of mail fraud The securities fraud count related to Duronio’s purchase of put option contracts which he bought on the belief that the widespread damage he would inflict with the logic bomb would cause UBS Paine Webber’s stock price to drop steeply. (In fact, the stock remained stable after the logic bomb was unleashed, and Duronio lost all of his $23,000 investment,according to trial testimony.) Trial testimony revealed that Duronio’s motive was that he was angry with the company, where he had worked for nearly two years, because the $32,500 annual bonus he received in 2002 was less than the $50,000 he was expecting.

                  Duronio worked at PaineWebber’s offices in Weehawken, N.J., and was with the company for two years while he served as a system administrator. He planted the logic bomb in some 1,000 of PaineWebber’s approximately 1,500 networked computers in branch offices around the country. Duronio, who repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with his salary and bonuses at Paine Webber, resigned from the company on Feb. 22, 2002.

                 3 Testimony and evidence at trial revealed that on March 4, 2002, the logic bomb “detonated” as Duronio planned and began deleting files on over 1,000 UBS PaineWebber computers. According to expert witness estimony for the government, the Duronio computer-user account was used to create, modify, disseminate and install the logic bomb on the UBS computers. There was also a direct link from Duronio’s home computer to the creation of the logic bomb.It cost PaineWebber more than $3 million to assess and repair the damage.

                  In anticipation that the stock price of UBS PaineWebber’s parent company, UBS, A.G.,would decline in response to damage caused by the logic bomb, Duronio also purchased more than $21,000 in “put option” contracts for UBS, A.G.'s stock. A put option is a type of security that increases in value when a stock price drops.

                  Market conditions at the time suggest there was no such impact on the UBS, A.G. stock price.Trial testimony revealed that the day the defendant quit his job from UBS he walked out of their offices and straight to his broker’s office to bet against UBS. Duronio’s broker,Gerry Speziale, testified that an angry Duronio came to his office and said words to the effect, “God knows what I can do to get even.

                  Another broker testified that Duronio was adamant that he wanted to bet $20,000 that the company’s stock would plummet within a few days, despite the broker’s advice that the strategy was risky and potentially disastrous. Duronio placed his last trade on March 1,2002, and the logic bomb attack occurred on March 4, 2002 at 9:30 a.m. PaineWebber promptly reported what had happened to government investigators and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and cooperated during the investigation and the trial, in which several employees testified for the government about the damage Duronio inflicted.

 

Roger Duronio Logic Bomb

 A Four-Part Plan

1. One part was the destructive portion, telling servers to delete all of their files.

2. Another part “pushed” the logic bomb to other servers, despite reboots and loss of power.

 Duronio’s logic bomb had two triggers, in case one trigger was found and deleted.

 

 Michael Lauffenburger

 General Dynamics Programmer 

                  A disgruntled computer programmer has been arrested on charges that he planted a destructive program in a plot to wipe out vital data on a rocket project and then get hired back as a high-priced consultant to repair the damage.

                 The 31-year-old suspect, Michael John Lauffenburger, was arrested by Federal agents on Tuesday, a month after a co-worker at the General Dynamics Corporation here had stumbled on the rogue program and alerted the authorities. Soon after the program was discovered, it was erased before it could cause any damage. Before quitting his job on May 29, Mr. Lauffenburger worked for General Dynamics on the Government's billion-dollar Atlas missile program. The Atlas was developed three decades ago as an intercontinental ballistic missile for the Air Force, but has been used as a booster rocket for space shots. Information on Contracts

                 The kind of program that Mr. Lauffenburger is accused of planting is known as a "logic bomb," which is secretly stored in a computer and time-set to erase or scramble data. Mr. Lauffenburger was charged with computer tampering and attempted computer fraud. If convicted, he could serve 10 years in prison and pay a $500,000 fine. He pleaded not guilty and was released on $10,000 bail Tuesday night.

  

Tony Xiaotong Yu

 

Deutsche, Morgan, Grenfell, Inc.

                  He was hired as a computer specialist in 1996, became securities trader after writing program for bond traders .He work there for several years and got angry from some reason. He planted logic bomb with trigger set to July 2000.Programmer caught rogue code in 1998, took several months to clean-up. The case went to court and Tony was sentenced to jail for several years.

                  The logic bomb of Tony was purely destructive, active. Logic bomb could have caused millions of dollars in damage. Tony was caught when he was telling a friend what he did on a tapped phone line.