Fired Employee Deletes Company Servers Worth Rp 16 Billion
Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – A young man from India committed a criminal act by breaking into a computer testing system and deleting 180 virtual servers. The reckless action was driven by hurt feelings and frustration at being dismissed by the company where he worked.
As a result of his actions, his former employer suffered significant losses amounting to US$918,000, or approximately Rp 16.4 billion.
For his illegal actions, the man named Kandula was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison. Quoting CNA on Wednesday (22/7/2026), Kandula’s dismissal by NCS, an information, communications and technology service provider, took place in October 2022 due to his poor performance.
He officially completed his last day of work on 16 November 2022. According to court documents, Kandula admitted he was confused and upset about the dismissal.
He felt he had worked well and made positive contributions during his time at NCS. After being let go, Kandula no longer had a job in Singapore and was forced to return to his hometown in India.
Before being dismissed, Kandula was part of a 20-person team that managed the quality assurance (QA) computer system at NCS from November 2021 to October 2022. The system was used to test software and new programmes before their official launch.
NCS confirmed that the damaged system was a “standalone testing system” consisting of around 180 virtual servers and did not store any sensitive information.
Chronology of the Server Breach
Even after returning to India, Kandula’s resentment did not fade. Using his personal laptop, he infiltrated the NCS system by illegally using administrator login credentials six times between 6 and 17 January 2023.
In February 2023, Kandula returned to Singapore to look for a new job and stayed in a room belonging to a former NCS colleague. Using the Wi-Fi network at that location, he accessed the NCS system again on 23 February 2023.
During the two-month period of illegal access, Kandula wrote and tested several computer scripts on Google to determine whether they could be used to delete servers.
The culmination came in March 2023. After accessing the NCS QA system 13 times, Kandula executed the programmed scripts on 18 and 19 March to delete the 180 virtual servers one by one in sequence.
The following day, the NCS IT team discovered the system was inaccessible. After troubleshooting efforts proved fruitless, they realised all the servers had been wiped out.
The case was finally reported to the police on 11 April 2023 after an internal investigation found several suspicious IP addresses. The police then seized Kandula’s laptop and found evidence of the scripts used to carry out the server deletion.