Maryland UNIX Engineer Convicted of Attempting to Destroy Fannie Mae Data

A federal jury convicted computer programmer Rajendrasinh Babubhai Makwana of Montgomery County, Md. of computer intrusion arising from the transmission of malicious script to Fannie Mae’s computer servers. The verdict was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein and Special Agent in Charge Richard A. McFeely of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Makwana faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. Makwana was a contractor working at Fannie Mae’s Urbana, Md. facility from 2006 to Oct. 24, 2008. Makwana was a UNIX engineer who worked on Fannie Mae’s network of almost 5,000 computer servers. According to testimony and evidence presented at trial, Makwana was fired on Oct. 24, 2008 and told to turn in all of his Fannie Mae equipment, including his laptop. On Oct. 29, 2008, a Fannie Mae senior engineer discovered a malicious script embedded in a routine program. A subsequent analysis of the script, computer logs, Makwana’s laptop and other evidence, revealed that Makwana had transmitted the malicious code on Oct. 24, 2008 which was intended to execute on Jan. 31, 2009. The malicious code was designed to propagate throughout the Fannie Mae network of computers and destroy all data, including financial, securities and mortgage information. United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein thanked the FBI for its investigative work and commended Assistant United States Attorney P. Michael Cunningham and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony V. Teelucksingh assigned from the Department of Justice Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section. For more information, visit http://baltimore.fbi.gov.