Ex-Fannie Mae worker charged with planting computer virus

A fired Fannie Mae contract employee allegedly placed a virus in the mortgage giant's software that could have shut the company down for at least a week and caused millions of dollars in damage, prosecutors say.

The virus was set to execute at 9 a.m. Jan. 31, first disabling Fannie Mae's computer monitoring system and then cutting all access to the company’s 4,000 servers, Nye wrote. Anyone trying to log in would receive a message saying "Server Graveyard."

From there, the virus would wipe out all Fannie Mae data, replacing it with zeros, Nye wrote. Finally, the virus would shut down the servers.