San Francisco IT worker arrested in hijacking of city network
A network administrator for the city of San Francisco has been arrested on charges of taking control of the city's computer network and locking administrators out, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Terry Childs, 43, was due to be arraigned on Tuesday after his arrest Sunday. He remains in jail on $5 million bail.
Childs, who has worked for the city for five years, is accused of tampering with the new Fiber Wide Area Network after allegedly being disciplined for poor performance. He is accused of electronically spying on his supervisors and their attempt to fire him, according to authorities.
Officials told the newspaper they were making some headway into regaining access to the system, but they fear that Childs has rigged a system to remotely destroy data.
Meanwhile, the network is up and running despite the fact that administrators have limited to no access.
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service, and the Associated Press. E-mail Elinor. 
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