Sacked techie wreaks havoc at security firm

A COMPUTER techie furious at being sacked by his bosses at an Oldham security company got his revenge by hacking into their system and wreaking havoc..

Mark Gathercole, who was employed as a network support engineer at Camwatch which monitors thousands of CCTV cameras across the UK, managed to virtually shut down the service to 160 customers including jewellers, bookmakers and car dealerships.

It took the company three days to identify and repair the damage, Manchester Crown Court heard. The company has been unable to put a figure on the cost of the damage.

The court was told that 32-year-old Gathercole, now of Burnley, had obtained remote access to computer systems by secretly installing software that allowed him to do so.

Imposing a suspended six-month prison sentence, Judge Maurice Greene told him: “It is quite clear that this was a sophisticated attempt to sabotage this company’s work”.

Gathercole was dismissed from his job in March, bosses citing poor performance, poor timekeeping and poor attendance as the reasons.

Sentencing him, Judge Greene said: “This was a mean and vindictive act.”

Gathercole, was put on probation for 12 months and ordered to do 120 hours’ of community work.


OUR website carries heavily edited versions of stories only available in full in our print and eChron editions
Follow us on Twitter: @OldhamChronicle