Customers of a Texas car dealership were left temporarily stranded after a disgruntled ex-employee allegedly hacked into the firm's IT systems - immobilising more than 100 cars.
Texas Auto Center parted company with 20-year-old Omar Ramos-Lopez in February as part of a 'workforce reduction', but by the end of the month reports had started to come in of bizarre behaviour among some of the cars sold from its four outlets.
The cars in question are each fitted with a black box system, through which the company can disable the engine if the customer gets behind in their payments. In the worse case, it can also sound the horn of a concealed auto to help 'repo' agents track down the target motor.
And when paid-up customers complained that their cars were honking in the small hours - leaving some with no option but to remove the battery - manager Martin Garcia initially wrote it down as a mechanical failure.
But the scale of the problem - with "up to 100 customers at a time complaining" - soon made it clear that something more sinister was afoot. Sure enough, when all of the system passwords were reset, the problems magically stopped.
Garcia told Wired.com that when the City of Austin Police's High Tech Crime Unit examined the system logs, they could track down the malicious activity to Ramos-Lopez's personal internet connection.
Ramos-Lopez, who faces computer intrusion charges, is alleged to have used an ex-colleague's account details to access the system, giving him access to devices installed in 1,100 cars sold by the firm.
"Omar was pretty good with computers," Garcia drily observed.
Police spokesperson Veneza Aguinaga added: "He caused these customers, now victims, to miss work.
"They didn't get paid. They had to get tow trucks. They didn't know what was going on with their vehicles."
