A US woman who broke into a credit union's computer system and destroyed more than 20 gigabytes of data in retaliation for being fired, has pleaded guilty in a Brooklyn court.
Juliana Barile pleaded guilty to one count of computer intrusion and faces up to 10 years imprisonment and a fine.
According to court filings, Barile was fired from her position as a part-time employee at the unnamed New York credit union on 19 May.
Two days later she remotely accessed the credit union’s file server and deleted more than 20,000 files and almost 3500 directories, totalling approximately 21.3 gigabytes of data.
The deleted data included files related to mortgage loan applications and the credit union’s anti-ransomware protection software.
Barile then sent text messages to a friend explaining that “I deleted their shared network documents”.
Her former employer has since spent around $10,000 trying to fix the damage.
FBI assistant director-in-charge Michael Driscoll says: "Ms. Barile may have thought she was getting back at her employer by deleting files, however she did just as much harm to customers.
"Her petty revenge not only created a huge security risk for the bank, but customers also depending on paperwork and approvals to pay for their homes were left scrambling."