It’s
not uncommon for companies to outsource jobs to foreign countries like China,
and it was recently discovered that one man took it upon himself to do the
same—with his own job. The man, being paid a six figure salary by his company,
hired contractors in China to do his work for him, paying the contractors about
a fifth of what he was being paid.
The
company had started allowing employees work from home from time to time, and to
ensure authenticity, they set up a VPN concentrator. Employees who did work
from home on some days were given a physical, rotating token RSA key fob to
connect to the network.
After
finding a contractor to do his work from China, the man mailed his key fob to
his new employee. It took over six months for the company to realize that
something was amiss with the VPN logs. First suspecting malware, they launched
an investigation with the help of Verizon. Initial logs showed that the man was
logged in from Shenyang, China—which was strange since he was sitting at his
desk in the office.
Eventually,
they realized this had been going on for over six months. Upon searching the
man’s computer files at work, they found several interesting things—including
payment invoices for the contractors in China. They also found a general layout
of his daily schedule for the past six months.
Far
from working hard for his several hundred thousand dollars a year, the man had
spent most of the last few months surfing Reddit, watching cat videos, eating
lunch, checking Ebay, browsing Facebook and LinkedIn, and sending an “update
e-mail” to management.
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