In 'Revenge Plot', Delhi Man Deletes 1,200 Microsoft User Accounts In US, Jailed For Two Years

An Indian national who deleted 1200 Microsoft accounts in the US, has been sentenced to two years in prison by a California court.

According to a report in NDTV, Deepanshu Kher was arrested in January when he flew from India to the United States, unaware of the outstanding warrant for his arrest.

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¡°This act of sabotage was destructive for this company,¡± said Acting US Attorney Randy Grossman on Tuesday.

While pronouncing the sentence, US District Court Judge Marilyn Huff noted that Kher perpetrated a significant and sophisticated attack on the company, an attack which was planned and clearly a part of a revenge plot.

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Beyond the two-year prison sentence, U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Huff sentenced Kher to three years of supervised release and ordered him to pay the victim company $567,084 (roughly Rs. 4 crore), the amount that company said it cost to rebuild from the hack.

According to court documents, Kher had worked for an IT consulting firm that deployed him to a Carlsbad, Calif. company in 2017 to help it migrate to Microsoft Office 360.

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The company provided bad reviews to Kher¡¯s employer, which then pulled him from the assignment and later fired him, according to a Justice Department news release, which named neither Kher¡¯s employer or the firm he pleaded guilty to hacking.

On August 8, 2018, two months after his return to India, Kher hacked into the Carlsbad Company's server and deleted over 1,200 of its 1,500 MS O365 user accounts.

Federal prosecutors alleged that the attack affected the bulk of the company's employees and completely shut down the company for two days.

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