Hacker Sentenced To Prison For One Year
A former employee at computer-monitor maker ViewSonic Corp. was sentenced Monday to one year in prison for hacking into the company's computer system and wiping out critical data central to running its foreign operations.
Andrew Garcia, 39, worked as a network administrator at the company's Walnut, Calif., office, where he maintained computer servers and had access to system passwords for managers.
Garcia pleaded guilty in October to one count of "accessing a protected computer and recklessly causing damage" at ViewSonic, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Central District of California in Los Angeles. ViewSonic reported more than $1 billion in annual revenue in 2003.
U.S. District Judge John F. Walter sent Garcia to prison for having accessed ViewSonic's computer system on April 14, 2002, approximately two weeks after he had been terminated, deleting critical files on a server he maintained while employed by the company. The loss of those files made the server inoperative, and ViewSonic's Taiwan office was unable to access important data for several days.
