A Tracy man has been indicted for allegedly accessing the computer network of the Discovery Bay Water Treatment Facility and shutting it down, the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday.
Rambler Gallo, 53, is accused of intentionally causing damage to a protected computer at the facility located in the town of Discovery Bay and intentionally uninstalling the main operational and monitoring system for the water treatment plant. He then allegedly turned off the servers running those systems, prosecutors said.
The indictment was filed on June 27 and was unsealed Thursday.
Gallo was a full-time employee of a private Massachusetts company listed in the indictment as “Company A,” which contracted with Discovery Bay to operate the wastewater treatment facility.
From July 2016 until December 2020, Gallo was the company’s instrumentation and control tech, responsible for maintaining the instrumentation and the computer systems used to control the electromechanical processes of the facility.
Prosecutors allege that Gallo installed software on his own personal computer and on Company A’s private internal network that allowed him to gain remote access to the Discovery Bay facility’s computer network.
In January 2021, after resigning from Company A, Gallo allegedly accessed the computer system remotely and transmitted a command to uninstall software that was the main hub of the facilities computer network and that protected the entire water treatment system, including water pressure, filtration, and chemical levels.
He has been charged with one count of transmitting a program, information, code and command to cause damage to a protected computer. If convicted, Gallo faces up to ten years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
I guess the pun demands…. What a s#!tty thing to do.
I guess he is in deep s#!t now!
More dumb people. The world is filled with idiots.
Was that Gallo or Callo?
Keep an eye on the water, folks…if you’re drinking from the tap get a reverse osmosis system. There’s a lot of crap floating around in municipal water (pun intended), not to mention forever chemicals.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/05/health/pfas-nearly-half-us-tap-water-wellness/index.html
Indeed. Toxic chemicals like the fluoride we were told was safe for decades. Its toxicity is just a conspiracy theory, they said.
Krappy people doing Krappy things
Gallo dreamed of the Rise of the Nerds.
Others flushed him.
…we are hearing everyday now – not enough computer security
Possible motive?
If convicted, Gallo faces up to ten years in prison and a fine of $250,000. Seems to me it’s a light sentence if the D.A. Prosecutes.
This certainly passes the Smell Test.
LOU,
.
This has absolutely nothing to do with Contra Costa County District Attorney Diane Becton or any other District Attorney in California, this is a federal case, and is being handled by the U.S. Department of Justice.
So if he wants to stand a chance he should quickly post as much Trump hate as possible on all his social media.
“Rambler” is a pretty cool name…. for a dog maybe.
But there has to be a motive.
Was he planning to backup the city’s crap until it overflowed all over unless they paid him a fortune or is he just nuts?
@DR. JELLYFINGER…He was tryin’ to make a livin’ and doing the best he could and he was born in the back seat of of Greyhound bus…..
Looks like the amount of damage hackers can do has increased over time but the legal consequences have not kept up. Ten years is not enough given the planning and intent to do massive harm.
Black Knight, So sorry I missed read I thought it was the Ca. DOJ who’s DA is Rob Bonta.
Or AG .I don’t have any experience with them.