Former Cisco Employee Sentenced to 2 Years in Prison for Damaging the Company’s Network
- Sudhish Kasaba Ramesh, 31, of San Jose, California is an Indian citizen who is in the United States on an H-1B visa and has a green card application pending.
A former Cisco employee has been sentenced to two years in prison for damaging the company’s network. In addition to the prison term, Sudhish Kasaba Ramesh of San Jose, California, has been ordered to pay a $15,000 fine for intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorization and recklessly causing damage.
Ramesh is out of custody and is scheduled to begin serving his prison term on Feb. 10.
Ramesh worked for Cisco and resigned in April 2018. Immigration Reform says is an Indian national who is in the United States on an H-1B visa and has a green card application pending.
According to the guilty plea he entered in federal court on Aug. 26, Ramesh deployed a code from his Google Cloud Project account that resulted in the deletion of 456 virtual machines for Cisco’s WebEx Teams application. This application provided video meetings, video messaging, file sharing, and other collaboration tools. He further admitted that he acted recklessly in deploying the code, and consciously disregarded the substantial risk that his conduct could harm to Cisco.
“As a result of Ramesh’s conduct, over 16,000 WebEx Teams accounts were shut down for up to two weeks, and caused Cisco to spend approximately $1,400,000 in employee time to restore the damage to the application and refund over $1,000,000 to affected customers,” the DOJ press release said, adding that “no customer data was compromised” as a result of Ramesh’s conduct.
The company also spent about $1.4 million in employee time to repair the damage and refunded $1 million to affected customers. Authorities said no customer data was compromised.
After Cisco, Ramesh was working with the San Francisco-based online personal styling service Stitch Fix. A company spokesperson told Immigration Reform that “Sudhish Ramesh no longer works at Stitch Fix” since he pleaded guilty. California law allows a company to terminate an employee who has been found or plead guilty, but not solely because charges have been filed.