When a Departing Engineer Locked Down a Company Server: Lessons in InfoSec

The phrase “delete‑the‑database‑run‑away” has long been a popular meme in the IT community, often used by programmers to vent frustration under high‑pressure work conditions.

Recently, the Nanhai police in Foshan, Guangdong successfully solved a case where a former employee remotely locked the company’s servers after resigning, resembling a real‑life “lock‑the‑disk‑run‑away.”

Resignation "venting" leads to disaster

According to the Foshan Public Security Bureau, a technician named Chen, after leaving his job, used the account and password that were not handed over during resignation to remotely log into the original company’s system server in October. He then launched an encryption program that locked the hard drives and deleted the decryption keys.

This action rendered the company’s hard drives inaccessible, causing a total system outage, substantial economic loss, and a loss of customer trust that severely damaged the company’s image.

After the incident, police in the Nanhai district used data analysis to locate criminal evidence and arrested Chen, who has now been approved for arrest by the procuratorate.

Netizens react

“Good technology should be used properly.”

“Is this the legendary delete‑database‑run‑away?”

“Is this high‑tech crime?”

“Skills are there, but must be applied legally and ethically.”

“Either the code or the person must run.”

Technology is neutral, people matter

In recent years, incidents where disgruntled former employees cause major damage have become increasingly common.

In November 2021, a programmer at a Beijing IT subsidiary wrote a crawler to delete company data, causing losses of over 100,000 yuan.

In August 2021, an employee of a U.S. online accounting firm deleted 17,000 job application files after being fired, severely damaging the company’s system files.

In January 2021, a 40‑year‑old Lianjia programmer erased a 9 TB database.

“Extreme actions are not a solution; technology is a double‑edged sword that must be used responsibly.” As technologists, while we use code to build a better world, we must also keep our ethical boundaries in check.