People love a good revenge story. A character with a particular set of skills (and appropriately chiseled cheekbones) seeking revenge against someone who wronged them is enough to get practically any movie or show green-lit. But a software engineer who used his skills against his former employer has learned the hard way that neither law enforcement nor a jury of his peers find vengeance as compelling as Hollywood. In fact it landed him with four years in prison.
The engineer in question is Davis Lu. He worked at a company called Eaton Corporation from 2007 to 2019. The company says on its website that it employs more than 92,000 people around the world and had $24.9 billion in sales in 2024. That's a massive organization—and apparently Lu thought he should devise a way to disrupt its operations if he ever found himself forced into seeking new employment.
