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UPDATE: Verizon client worker outsourced part of his job to China so he could have more free time

“Bob” just wanted to surf YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn

By Layer 8 on Wed, 01/16/13 - 10:12am.

UPDATE: Verizon offered up this case study of the outsourcing case, click here.

A number of sources are reporting today that a software developer who was worked for a client of Verizon had outsourced part of his job to a company in China so he could have more free time to hit up YouTube, Facebook and other sites.

The employee - so far only identified as "Bob", reportedly paid just a fifth of his six-figure salary to a company based in Shenyang to do his job.

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According to The Register: The story began after a Verizon clinet asked the telecommunications firm it for an audit, suspecting a security breach after the company set up a basic VPN system with two-factor authentication so staff could work at home. The VPN traffic logs showed a regular series of logins to the company's main server from Shenyang, China, using the credentials of the firm's top programmer, "Bob". "The company's IT personnel were sure that the issue had to do with some kind of zero day malware that was able to initiate VPN connections from Bob's desktop workstation via external proxy and then route that VPN traffic to China, only to be routed back to their concentrator," said Verizon. After getting permission to study Bob's computer habits, Verizon investigators found that he had hired a software consultancy in Shenyang to do his programming work for him, and had FedExed them his two-factor authentication token so they could log into his account. He was paying them a fifth of his six-figure salary to do the work and spent the rest of his time on other activities.

According to a BBC account of the story: The employee, an "inoffensive and quiet" but talented man versed in several programming languages, "spent less than one fifth of his six-figure salary for a Chinese firm to do his job for him. "Evidence even suggested he had the same scam going across multiple companies in the area. All told, it looked like he earned several hundred thousand dollars a year, and only had to pay the Chinese consulting firm about $50,000 annually."

Of no surprise to anyone the guy no longer works for the company.

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