WASHINGTON-A fired Fannie Mae contract worker pleaded not guilty to charges he planted a virus designed to destroy all the data on the secondary mortgage market giant's 4,000 computer servers nationwide.
Had the virus been released as planned on Saturday, the disruption could have cost millions of dollars and shut down operations for a week at Fannie Mae, the largest U.S. mortgage finance company, authorities said.
Rajendrasinh Makwana, 35, pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court in Baltimore to one count of computer intrusion.
Makwana is an Indian citizen who has lived in the United States since at least 2001, according to court records.
He was fired Oct. 24 from his computer programming job at Fannie Mae's data center in Urbana, about 35 miles from the company's Washington headquarters, where he had worked since 2006. He was fired for erroneously writing programming instructions two weeks earlier that changed the settings on the servers, according to an FBI affidavit.
Fannie Mae did not immediately terminate Makwana's computer access after telling him he was fired early on the afternoon of Oct. 24, the affidavit states. Before surrendering his badge and laptop computer about 3 1/2 hours later, the indictment accused Makwana of "intentionally and without authorization caused and attempted to cause damage to Fannie Mae's computer network by entering malicious code."
A Fannie Mae engineer discovered the malicious instructions by chance Oct. 29. The virus was removed that day and did no harm, according to the affidavit.
Had the virus been released, "it would have caused millions of dollars of damage and reduced if not shut down operations" for at least a week, according to the affidavit.
Fannie Mae may have had to clean out and restore all 4,000 servers, restore and secure the automation of mortgages and restore all data that was erased, the agent said.
