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It doesn’t sound like this is what happened though. > During his unauthorized access, Ramesh admitted that he deployed a code from his Google Cloud Project acc

It doesn’t sound like this is what happened though. > During his unauthorized access, Ramesh admitted that he deployed a code from his Google Cloud Project account that resulted in the deletion of 456 virtual machines for Cisco’s WebEx Teams application It sounds like this may have been more accidental than malicious.

bpodgursky 6y ago
Pure speculation, but I wonder if he had gcp service account credentials sitting around his laptop which applied terraform to the wrong project. terraform apply -auto-approve can wipe out a lot of infrastructure in a few seconds.
- lykr0n 6y ago
  That would be amazing. And I could believe it. Not properly setting up and configuring auth could result in long duration of auth tokens, which could be sitting around unknowingly.
- gruez 6y ago
  Most crimes require mens rea for conviction. That is, the prosecution has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you intended to do it. If it's really the case that he accidentally ran terraform with the wrong project/credentials, I doubt he'd accept the plea agreement.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    HN has previously discussed the egregious power imbalance at play in plea agreements.
paxys 6y ago
Just a few lines above what you wrote: > Sudhish Kasaba Ramesh, who worked at Cisco from July 2016 to April 2018, admitted in a plea agreement with prosecutors that he had deliberately connected to Cisco's AWS-hosted systems without authorization in September 2018 How does that sound accidental to you?
- galimaufry 6y ago
  Could just be very risk-averse plea-bargaining on Ramesh's part.
  - codezero 6y ago
    Yep. It may just be a fact that he ran terraform and it said to delete all VM instances, only he forgot he had his old credentials in the environment variables, and who would have ever expected them to work. That said, the lack of details on this do leave a lot to be imagined - it’s just as easy to read this as revenge, and that large companies don’t bother to publicly shame people most of the time.
- geofft 6y ago
  It's a plea agreement. It's quite common in the US to admit to crimes you didn't do to secure a plea bargain.

bpodgursky 6y ago

Pure speculation, but I wonder if he had gcp service account credentials sitting around his laptop which applied terraform to the wrong project. terraform apply -auto-approve can wipe out a lot of infrastructure in a few seconds.

lykr0n 6y ago
That would be amazing. And I could believe it. Not properly setting up and configuring auth could result in long duration of auth tokens, which could be sitting around unknowingly.
gruez 6y ago
Most crimes require mens rea for conviction. That is, the prosecution has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you intended to do it. If it's really the case that he accidentally ran terraform with the wrong project/credentials, I doubt he'd accept the plea agreement.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  HN has previously discussed the egregious power imbalance at play in plea agreements.

paxys 6y ago

Just a few lines above what you wrote: > Sudhish Kasaba Ramesh, who worked at Cisco from July 2016 to April 2018, admitted in a plea agreement with prosecutors that he had deliberately connected to Cisco's AWS-hosted systems without authorization in September 2018 How does that sound accidental to you?

galimaufry 6y ago
Could just be very risk-averse plea-bargaining on Ramesh's part.
- codezero 6y ago
  Yep. It may just be a fact that he ran terraform and it said to delete all VM instances, only he forgot he had his old credentials in the environment variables, and who would have ever expected them to work. That said, the lack of details on this do leave a lot to be imagined - it’s just as easy to read this as revenge, and that large companies don’t bother to publicly shame people most of the time.
geofft 6y ago
It's a plea agreement. It's quite common in the US to admit to crimes you didn't do to secure a plea bargain.