this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2025
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Developer convicted for “kill switch” code activated upon his termination (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 day ago by WetBeardHairs@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] Korkki@lemmy.ml 84 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Why do kill switches when you can just hog all the work of maintaining some critical part of the infrastructure and make it's functioning and maintenance so opaque and impenetrable that the employer can't replace or fire you without their shit catching fire soon after. It doesn't have to be malicious or illegal.

https://youtu.be/0jK0ytvjv-E

His efforts to sabotage their network began that year, and by the next year, he had planted different forms of malicious code, creating "infinite loops" that deleted coworker profile files, preventing legitimate logins and causing system crashes

I wish this guy was were actually politically motivated, but he seems to have been just really petty minded person.

[–] JoMiran@lemmy.ml 24 points 23 hours ago

Why do kill switches when you can just hog all the work of maintaining some critical part of the infrastructure and make it's functioning and maintenance so opaque and impenetrable that the employer can't replace or fire you without their shit catching fire soon after.

This is literally my firm's core business practice. We've been at it for so long that at this point we have to be included in competing bids because we are the only ones in the world that can do certain specific things.

[–] Railcar8095@lemm.ee 12 points 23 hours ago

That's what my old company used to do. You did this? Do a KT to some underpaid remote employee and when they leave it's again your responsibility to maintain it, alongside the new bugs and spaghetti they introduced.

We once told a SP50 customer that we would not provide a business critical service because an employee went on sabatical for a month and she had the only working version on her cookery computer. At that point the customer was so integrated with us that it would take them years to replace us.

[–] ubergeek@lemmy.today 3 points 14 hours ago

so opaque and impenetrable that the employer can’t replace or fire you without their shit catching fire soon after.

Somehow, that's the kinda roles I always land in lol