If everyone tight lipped and they don't engage a data recovery then you are safe. But unless they able to do IT audit and able to see if there was a breach in system then they will most likely penalise the IT guys but even they can claim there was unforseen glitch as the error can't be replicated .

But these glitches do happen at times its very hard to pinpoint .

I know my salary higher than my peers in the company.

Inb4 work at low paying chinaman company so it doesn't matter.

In all seriousness, I think the 'crime' here is the data breach. Don't think there is any law forbidding discussions or talking about salary

PS this is not legal advice

Yeah i did some search and as you said there's no law on thar discussion. Not sure if i signed any NDA that can be used against me during employment.

Yeah i know I'll just take the replies here as a grain of salt. I did consult my legal dept in my company and got a more professional answer but didn't Address what i wanted to know, just wondering if anyone have experience or know stories related to cases like this or not, usually how it ends or whatnot.

MNC's all have NDA's , sign any?

u r no longer in the firm. nothing they can do to you.
plus, what law did you break? gossiping?

since you said you came across a bug, it is not your fault. Its IT's.

Discovering is not guilty but extracting confidential data ans share it, thats different case. Enough to make a company to sue you and bring misery to your life by dragging you into court even if not winning

One day I came across a bug in the HR platform and able to see everyone's pay inside the MNC.
I was furious after looking at it and found out I'm the lowest pay among all my peers of the same level despite me handling more projects than them.
To add salt to wound, the one slightly younger than me also got few hundred higher than me.

I noticed 1 thing is that, if somebody is paid high, it is very high; conversely when someone is underpaid, it is ridiculously low.
One example is Controller normally is 10k and above, 1 of them got paid a shockingly low amount at 5.5k. This person joined the MNC few years ago, while the rest of his peers hired recently all got 9 to 10k. All same experience and capability.

As for me, my pay difference compared to my own peers can be as much as 2k. My pay is still above average if want to compare to most Malaysians, but as a professional that puts in effort on work but get paid unfairly low is like an insult to me.

So I decided to handpick a few colleagues that got affected by this unfair system and told them directly where they stand in the pay ranking.
I think this caused quite a few people resigned right away.

It's been 7 months now I'm serving another company with astronomical pay raise, suddenly I received a call from ex-colleague that is still inside that MNC and informed me that now the rumors have spread far enough to reach the top managements' ears, and now they are serious about investigating this matter, that ex-colleague is worried if anything is going to happen to me or not. It's a bit funny that the uproar only happens many months after I resigned and left.

On my last day in that MNC I did cleanly delete all files that even has a 0.1% chance of hurting me, and delete all chats.
I did not circulate the leaked salary file too, I only verbally let them know about it.

What are the chances of that MNC actually take action against me? Receive legal better? What is my worst case scenario?

Worst Case Scenario :

1. Court case. They hire lawyer.

2. What is Delete? Do you know what is Delete?
( as a Developer, i never do Delete function. The button [Delete] that appear in my system IS NEVER DELETE. just hide the file/data/entry somewhere else.

3. "I did not circulate the leaked salary file too, I only verbally let them know about it."
Doesnt make sense to me. Sounds like
"I didnt Touch the company cash physically. i only move the fund digitally to somewhere else."
1st. Fair?? Unfair??
Did they cheat you? like agreed on RM10k but pay only RM7k??
The company, management has the right to hire another person for the amount both party agreed? No?
So, all the company, when they hire NEW Staff, the salary amount must be agreed by whole company??
4. I can imagine, this has cause every1 that still in the company, keep thinking about this.
If i am the 1 of the management, and this event has cause "unrecovered" after effect....
The only thing i can do is - take action against you.
I am sorry, this is a serious mistake.
You had jeopardize a Company with un-recovable damage based on nonsense.

Not sure if they want to spend such money to hire lawyer just to get back to 1 staff, plus i didn't hurt the company business or whatever, just that it caused some resignation of few staffs, they might be also planning to leave anyway, could be not due to my leaking. If you want to pinpoint, you can say i disrupt the back end professional services, not the major business. Back end always replaceable and not key staff.

As far as I'm aware, whether i delete or not, after laptop hand over back to IT, they will format it in 2 days. All data will be wiped clean anyway. I didn't keep traces in email at all (no source to begin with), so even if they somehow go into my email and check, it's fine. I got the file thru other less known channel.

For that phrase that doesn't make sense to you, i meant to convey that no one actually got hold of the file itself, so there will be no concrete proof, the info is only coming from me verbally.

Don't know why you're so sided with the company, yes technically they didn't cheat me, but it's not like i got a choice, i was in bitter position in my ex company and so happens this mnc passed all my interviews and accepted me, they didn't give me what i asked for, but still an upgrade in salary, that stupid hr low key low balling me that caused this scenario 2 years down the road. It's harsh if the starting point is low enough, every subsequent increment will also be low because it based on basic. You been paid fairly your whole life?