Fired Software Developer Convicted of Sabotaging Employer’s Network in Revenge Hack

A disgruntled ex-employee just learned the hard way that digital revenge can come with a hefty price tag—and possible prison time.

Davis Lu, 55, of Houston, was convicted by a federal jury for unleashing malicious code on his former employer’s network, causing massive system crashes and locking out thousands of users worldwide.

Lu, a longtime software developer for an Ohio-based company, didn’t take kindly to a corporate shakeup in 2018 that stripped him of responsibilities. Instead of moving on, he spent months plotting his retaliation. By August 2019, he had embedded code designed to crash company servers, delete coworker profiles, and trigger a “kill switch” that would lock out all employees the moment his own credentials were disabled.

And in true villain fashion, he gave his code ominous names—“Hakai” (Japanese for “destruction”), “HunShui” (Chinese for “lethargy”), and the pièce de résistance, “IsDLEnabledinAD” (a nod to himself, meaning “Is Davis Lu enabled in Active Directory”).

When Lu was fired on September 9, 2019, his revenge plan activated, locking out thousands of employees worldwide and causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages. Before handing over his company laptop, he made one last move—deleting encrypted data. Investigators later discovered he had been researching ways to escalate privileges, hide his tracks, and wipe files at lightning speed.

Now, Lu faces up to 10 years in federal prison for his digital sabotage. His sentencing date is still pending, but one thing is clear—burning bridges with a few lines of malicious code is never a good career move.

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