<nettime> Software developer outsources own job and whiles away shifts on cat videos

[nettime's employee of the the year <nettime@kein.org>]

Software developer Bob outsources own job and whiles away shifts on cat 
videos

Verizon's hunt for firm's mysterious hacker exposes 'top worker' at firm 
who let Chinese consultants log on to do his daily work

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 16 January 2013 18.12 GMT	

When a routine security check by a US-based company showed someone was 
repeatedly logging on to their computer system from China, it naturally 
sent alarm bells ringing. Hackers were suspected and telecoms experts 
were called in.

It was only after a thorough investigation that it was revealed that the 
culprit was not a hacker, but "Bob" (not his real name), an "inoffensive 
and quiet" family man and the company's top-performing programmer, who 
could be seen toiling at his desk day after day and staring diligently 
at his monitor.

For Bob had come up with the idea of outsourcing his own job – to China. 
So, while a Chinese consulting firm got on with the job he was paid to 
do, on less than one-fifth of his salary, he whiled away his working day 
surfing Reddit, eBay and Facebook.

The extraordinary story has been revealed by Andrew Valentine, senior 
investigator at US telecoms firm Verizon Business, on its website, 
securityblog.verizonbusiness.com.

Verizon's risk team was called by the unnamed critical infrastructure 
company last year, "asking for our help in understanding some anomalous 
activity that they were witnessing in their VPN logs", wrote Valentine.

The company had begun to allow its software developers to occasionally 
work from home and so had set up "a fairly standard VPN [virtual private 
network] concentrator" to facilitate remote access.

When its IT security department started actively monitoring logs being 
generated at the VPN, "What they found startled and surprised them: an 
open and active VPN connection from Shenyang, China! As in this 
connection was live when they discovered it," wrote Valentine.

What was more, the developer whose credentials were being used was 
sitting at his desk in the office.

"Plainly stated, the VPN logs showed him logged in from China, yet the 
employee is right there, sitting at his desk, staring into his monitor."

Verizon's investigators discovered "almost daily connections from 
Shenyang, and occasionally these connections spanned the entire workday".

The employee, whom Valentine calls Bob, was in his mid-40s, a "family 
man, inoffensive and quiet. Someone you wouldn't look twice at in an 
elevator."

But an examination of his workstation revealed hundreds of pdf invoices 
from a third party contractor/developer in Shenyang.

"As it turns out, Bob had simply outsourced his own job to a Chinese 
consulting firm. Bob spent less than one-fifth of his six-figure salary 
for a Chinese firm to do his job for him."

He had physically FedExed his security RSA "token", needed to access the 
VPN, to China so his surrogates could log in as him.

When the company checked his web-browsing history, a typical "work day" 
for Bob was: 9am, arrive and surf Reddit for a couple of hours, watch 
cat videos; 11.30am, take lunch; 1pm, eBay; 2pm-ish, Facebook updates, 
LinkedIn; 4.40pm–end of day, update email to management; 5pm, go home.

The evidence, said Valentine, even suggested he had the same scam going 
across multiple companies in the area.

"All told, it looked like he earned several hundred thousand dollars a 
year, and only had to pay the Chinese consulting firm about fifty grand 
annually".

Meanwhile, his performance review showed that, for several years in a 
row, Bob had received excellent remarks for his codes which were "clean, 
well written and submitted in a timely fashion".

"Quarter after quarter, his performance review noted him as the best 
developer in the building," wrote Valentine.

Bob no longer works for the company.


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