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SF employee accused of setting network sabotage time bomb
Bail for a San Francisco city employee accused of hijacking the city's network remained at $5 million on Friday after prosecutors accused the worker of rigging the network to sabotage it the next time it was shut down for maintenance or due to a power failure, according to The San Francisco Chronicle.
Terry Childs, 43, was arrested July 13 on charges of tampering with the city's computer network. He remained in jail after the hearing on Wednesday.
In a secret meeting with Mayor Gavin Newsom on Monday, Childs revealed the passwords to the system so officials could take back control of it.
However, the Sheriff's Department and Park and Recreation Department remained locked out, although the network was in operation, the newspaper reported.
"He had a malicious intent to destroy the entire network," Prosecutor Conrad del Rosario is quoted as saying.
Childs' lawyer, Erin Crane, says her client has done nothing illegal and is being made a scapegoat by city officials who wanted to get rid of him for no legitimate reason.
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. 
I live in California and if, emphasis on "if", I understand the law correctly an employer does not need a reason, legitimate or not, to get rid of an employee. Now a union worker may have different rights depending on the contract, but I don't think that applies to Child's.
As to the legality of withholding the access codes, well we shall see.
Thanks for the info Michicael
He's an egotist and an overprotective fool who thought himself more potent than the folks who managed him. That said, I sincerely doubt that there was any intent to "destroy the network". Anyone with even passing knowledge of how Cisco routers actually work (and WAN networking in general), knows how drop-easy it is for a not-so-intelligent admin to tear things up accidentally (network loops, black holes, etc etc).
It's an ugly story, and quite frankly, there's more malfeasance on the prosecutor's part (get flashy national-coverage-sized conviction = get elected to higher office) than there is on Childs' part. After all, if the guy really wanted to destroy the network, he could have very easily have done so and made it all look like an accident (or better still - look like incompetence on his co-workers' and/or managers' part)... with 99.9% of his co-workers and managers not even knowing how it happened.
This is a SECURITY MEASURE not a Malicious attempt. The management KNEW he was the only one with the passwords to the routers and did not put any policies in place to otherwise disperse that password because he was and is the only engineer with intimate enough knowledge of the details to not **** it up. I guarantee you now that the network password is exposed for all of the techs to see, that network is going to "implode."
And they'll blame it on him.
Michichael
Usually you have at least two admins with full access and all the passwords (you can then park the file on a couple of USB sticks right next to the flash images, and have both of 'em dropped off in a safe deposit box at the bank).
- by Chris-Anderson July 25, 2008 11:13 AM PDT
- Related Article to That Story: SysAdmin Who Locked San Francisco Network Gives Key to Mayor Gavin Newsom
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