SINGAPORE – A man attached to the State Courts as an external info-communication technology vendor made an unlawful modification to a government-managed laptop issued to him, allowing an unauthorised person to access it remotely.
This compromised the safety of more than 18,000 files belonging to the State Courts, although no exfiltration took place during the remote connection.
Janarthanan Tamil Kovan, 42, was sentenced to 28 weeks’ jail on Sept 28 after he pleaded guilty to one count each of misusing a computer system and an offence under the Official Secrets Act.
Ironically, he committed the offences as he wanted to use the government-managed laptop to take an examination in information security, as his personal laptop had a faulty screen.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Matthew Choo said: “While the files themselves did not contain any sensitive case-specific information, (they) contained information that could potentially be used to gain unauthorised access to various systems that contained sensitive and confidential information, such as case information and judges’ notes.”
Court documents stated that Janarthanan, an Indian national, was employed as a service delivery manager with information technology firm Lenovo PCCW Solutions in 2017.
In June 2024, he was attached to the State Courts as an external vendor, and was a team leader of its cloud system team, which managed the various systems and applications there.
He was issued with the government-managed laptop, which contained 18,016 files belonging to the State Courts, including the login credentials of the State Courts’ network.
The laptop was protected by the Government Technology Agency of Singapore’s (GovTech) Security Suite for Engineering Endpoint Devices (SEED), a mobile device management platform.
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