The FBI arrested a 25-year-old Brockton man on Thursday in connection with a computer intrusion at a wireless service provider.
BROCKTON — A 25-year-old city man was arrested by federal agents Thursday morning and charged with accessing the computer system of the company he was fired from three month ago.
Colby Anderson, of 93 Guild Road, was arrested by detectives and FBI agents at his home about 6:19 a.m. He was charged federally with intentionally causing damage to a protected computer.
An affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Boston details an August “computer intrusion” at Foxboro-based Sedtech Solutions Inc., which operates as Blueport Wireless, a high-speed internet access provider that serves customers in the hospitality industry.
One of the companies that Blueport has a contract with is Portland, Oregon-based Eleven Software, a service referred to as ElevenOS
nderson began working for Blueport in August 2017 as an hourly technician and was promoted to network operations center technician in January. His job was to handle customer support tickets that escalated beyond initial troubleshooting, monitoring equipment, performing updates and configuration changes and maintaining equipment documentation, the affidavit states.
As part of his employment, Anderson was given login credentials for the ElevenOS system, as well as PRTG Network Monitor, a subscription-based system Blueport utilizes to monitor, store and analyze data from customer networks.
In July, Anderson was terminated for misconduct when he was caught smoking inside the Foxboro facilities, the affidavit states.
“Blueport Wireless executives described Anderson as visibly upset throughout his termination process,” FBI Special Agent Michael Bordini wrote in his affidavit.
About a month after he was fired, on Aug. 2, Blueport Wireless began receiving customer complaints that their high-speed internet was not available. The company learned that the configuration profiles for affected customers had been deleted through the ElevenOS system.
Blueport executives determined that over a span of four hours that day, the profiles for 100 to 120 customers were deleted, Bordini wrote.
The accounts of two current Blueport employees were accessed by an IP address that was traced to a home on Guild Road in Brockton, the affidavit states. The two employees’ accounts were used to delete the profiles, but the employees told authorities they never logged into their accounts or deleted any customers’ information that day, it states.
“According to Blueport Wireless, over $50,000 was spent on around-the-clock employee labor in an attempt to rectify the issues caused by the changes to the customer’s ElevenOS and PRTG accounts and the resulting outages,” Bordini wrote.
Authorities traced the IP address back to a Comcast subscriber living at 93 Guild Road in Brockton, the affidavit states. Police were able to determine that Anderson was renting a room in the basement at that home and that he was the only person living there who had previously worked for Blueport.
The FBI applied for a search warrant for the home, which was granted by a U.S. District Court judge. That warrant was executed on Thursday and Anderson was arrested without incident.
Anderson pleaded not guilty Thursday afternoon during his arraignment in the Boston federal courthouse.
https://www.enterprisenews.com/news/20181012/feds-brockton-man-accessed-foxboro-companys-computers-after-firing
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/brockton-man-charged-computer-intrusion