T 5.1 Manipulation or destruction of equipment or accessories

External as well as internal perpetrators may try to manipulate or destroy equipment, accessories, documents, or other data media (e.g. DVDs or USB sticks) or other such items for various reasons (revenge, ill will, frustration). The impact of such manipulations becomes even greater the later they are detected, the greater the skills and knowledge of the perpetrator, and the deeper the impact on a given workflow. The effects range from unauthorised reading of data worthy of protection to the destruction of data media or IT systems, which may lead to significant downtimes.

Example:

• An employee in one company used his knowledge of the fact that an important server was sensitive to excessive operating temperatures and blocked the ventilation slots of the power supply fan by hiding an object behind the server. Two days later, the hard disk in the server malfunctioned due to overheating, and the server was down for several days. The attacker claimed afterwards that it was an accident.
• An employee became so angry after his system crashed repeatedly that he let his anger out on his workstation computer. He kicked the computer so hard that the hard disk was damaged to the point of uselessness. The data stored on this hard disk could only be partially reconstructed by restoring a backup from the day before.