Dublin Man Sentenced For Damaging Company Computers: DOJ

DUBLIN, CA — Dublin resident Vamsikrishna Naganathanahalli was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to damaging computers owned by his former employer, according to the Department of Justice.

In August, Naganathanahalli pleaded guilty to three counts of intentionally causing damaged to a protected computer. Vituity used the Oracle Human Capital Management platform to manage human resource data for its 7,000 employees, and the platform contained records like Social Security numbers, salaries, and addresses. Naganathanahalli worked for Vituity from 2018 to 2022 as a Senior HCM Architect.

He admitted in his plea agreement that on May 28, 2022, the day after he was told his employment was terminated, Naganathanahalli used his access to a privileged HCM service to change the password for another employee's privileged Vituity HCM account without authorization. Around Sept. 6, 2022, after his employment ended, Naganathanahalli used the privileged HCM account to change the password for a Vituity contractor. He then used the contractor's account to load files containing are data, which replace real data. The generic masked data overwrote the real data for approximately 90 of all current and former Vituity employees, resulting in losses of at least $400,930.

In addition to his prison sentence, Naganathanahalli was also ordered to pay $40,930 in restitution, $300 in special assessment, and was sentenced to a three-year period of supervised release. He will begin his sentence on July 20.