Former civil servant gets community service for sabotaging sewage installation via network
A former official from the municipality of Lopik has been sentenced to 240 hours of community service for sabotaging the sewerage installation. The man has logged in twice from outside to sabotage the installation’s system.
The sabotage took place in November 2017 and January 2018. On the first time, the ex-official deleted 8,000 files. As a result, the system could not be controlled remotely for three days. The second time, the pumps were turned on, the valves were turned off, and the fault messages were turned off.
The system logs revealed two IP addresses with which the man had logged in: the IP address associated with his internet account in Bergambacht and that of his parents’ internet connection in Zwartsluis. According to the ruling, a note was also found at his home with login details. The police suspect that he had logged in with a laptop from the municipality.
The municipality had two laptops with a Vodafone data subscription for the use of Aquaview, the management and monitoring program for the sewerage installation. One of those two laptops was subsequently lost. However, there is no evidence that the suspect was still in possession of the laptop after it went missing.
The man was employed by the municipality of Lopik until July 1, 2017, where he was responsible for the sewerage installation. As administrator, he provided, among other things, the usernames and passwords for Aquaview to the technicians. The version of Aquaview used in the sabotage was different from that of the other users.