Termination of employment often ends on a negative note. This was the case for information, communication, and technology services company NCS, which suffered the deletion of 180 of its virtual servers.

The act was carried out by a former employee named Kandula, who worked at the company until October 2022 before his contract was terminated due to unsatisfactory performance.

Unwilling to accept the decision, Kandula illegally accessed the company’s testing systems. He deleted 180 virtual servers, causing estimated losses of US$918,000, or approximately Rp15 billion.

Court documents revealed that Kandula felt confused and angry following his dismissal. He believed his performance had been strong and that he had contributed positively to NCS.

After losing his job, Kandula was left unemployed in Singapore and eventually returned to India.

While in his home country, he used his laptop to gain unauthorized access to NCS systems by exploiting administrator login credentials. He made at least six attempts between January 6 and January 17, 2023.

In February of the same year, Kandula returned to Singapore in search of employment and rented a room shared with a former NCS colleague.

Using the Wi-Fi network, he accessed NCS systems on February 23, 2023. Kandula ran several scripts sourced from Google to repeatedly delete system data.

Throughout March 2023, he accessed NCS’s quality assurance (QA) system 14 times. On March 18–19, he executed scripts that resulted in the deletion of 180 virtual servers.

The following day, NCS staff discovered that their systems were inaccessible. Upon investigation, they found the servers had been wiped and promptly reported the incident to the authorities.

The investigation traced several IP addresses back to Kandula. His laptop was confiscated, revealing scripts used to delete the entire system.

As a result of his criminal actions, Kandula was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison.