Man Installed "Kill Switch" So That If He Was Ever Fired, All Hell Would Break Loose

For most of us, getting revenge on a company that screwed us over will only ever be a bitter daydream. But when one company messed with the wrong man, he decided to make good on that fantasy, turning it into costly reality.

Last week, a Texas-based software developer by the name of Davis Lu was found guilty by a federal jury for maliciously disrupting servers at Eaton Corp, a huge power management firm headquartered in Dublin, Ireland.

An employee since 2007, Lu's efforts at digital sabotage started in 2018 when he became frustrated with Eaton's management, which had begun "corporate realignment" — a vague PR term that usually means layoffs are imminent. In this case, Lu's work duties shifted, and he found that his system access had been reduced.

Fearing the worst, the software dev hatched a plan straight out of "Tron": he began researching ways to boost his admin privileges, rapidly delete system files en masse, and hide the code that does it.

By August 4, 2019, Lu began programming "infinite loops" to intercept logins and delete employee files, codes which he named "Hakai," Japanese for "destruction," and "HunShui," part of the Mandarin idiom "hún shuǐ mō yú," meaning to use the computer to be lazy at work. Cyberslacking, in a word.

But his magnum opus was a "kill switch," a string of code called "IsDLEnabledinAD," an abbreviation of "Is Davis Lu enabled in Active Directory?" The code was dormant so long as the system's response was "yes." But on September 9 of 2019, when Lu was laid off, that answer became "no," causing the code to lock out all other users, throwing the company's operations into chaos.

FBI investigators uncovered his handywork by tracing the code back to a server Lu had access to, which was executing the attack via a computer using Lu's login info. He could face up to 10 years in federal prison for his handywork, which the company claimed caused "hundreds of thousands in losses," though Lu's attorneys peg that number closer to $5,000, according to Cleveland.com.

Lu may not know it, but he joins a tradition of like-minded neo-Luddites, a term harkening back to militant worker groups in Britain who smashed shiny new textile machines to protect their jobs from automation. Such groups tend to be disorganized and clustered within Western countries, like the American computer smashers of the late 60s, or the French anarchist cell Action Directe of the late 70s and early 80s.

Though typically smeared as Neanderthals scared of progress, Luddites of all stripes have historically been highly-skilled workers whose resistance to tech had more to do with wresting control of it from the grip of capitalists, rather than the equipment itself.

One noteworthy group was the Comité Liquidant Ou Détournant Les Ordinateurs (CLODO), a coalition of disgruntled software engineers and tech workers who sabotaged computer centers and nuclear sites throughout southern France in the early 80s.

Like Lu, they also made light of their work — "Clodo" is French slang for "bum" — submitting a quippy self-interview with the French magazine Terminal 19/84.

"We are essentially attacking what these tools lead to," CLODO says of their sabotage: "files, surveillance by means of badges and cards, instrument of profit maximization for the bosses and of accelerated pauperization for those who are rejected."

Though their most public stunts were firebombs and vandalism, CLODO also claimed to engage in more silent forms of destruction on the job: "These actions are only the visible tip of the iceberg! We ourselves and others fight daily in a less ostensible way... we take advantage of [software errors], which undoubtedly costs our employers more than the material damage we cause. We’ll only say that the art consists of creating bugs that will only appear later on, little time-bombs."

Far from simple technophobes, CLODO and Lu share a much more complicated cause as workers for whom technology represents layoffs, hardship, and dehumanization. As those controlling tech increasingly choose profit over people, it's no wonder workers like Lu are fighting back.

More on sabotage: Arsonists Set Fire to a Dozen Teslas, Charging Stations Amid "Anti-Capitalist Coordination to Target Tesla"