July 17th, 2008
Rogue network admin still in jail on $5m bail
This is crazy. Perhaps literally. Terry Childs, computer network administrator for the city of San Francisco, got mad, apparently because his supervisors were trying to fire him, and created a secret root password for himself, locking out the rest of the city. Reported the SF Chronicle:
Prosecutors say Childs, who works in the Department of Technology at a base salary of just over $126,000, tampered with the city’s new FiberWAN (Wide Area Network), where records such as officials’ e-mails, city payroll files, confidential law enforcement documents and jail inmates’ bookings are stored.
Childs created a password that granted him exclusive access to the system, authorities said. He initially gave pass codes to police, but they didn’t work. When pressed, Childs refused to divulge the real code even when threatened with arrest, they said.
Childs is in jail on a whopping $5 million bail, roughly five times what murderers get. The Chron reported today that the public defender withdrew based on conflict of interest and Childs now has an appointed attorney.
Erin Crane, was quick to call the case a “big misunderstanding” that has been “blown out of proportion” in the media. Crane said the city’s network is in no danger.
“He is a very well respected computer engineer,” Crane said of her client. She added that Childs developed the city’s network and even copyrighted his work. “He worked out the bugs,” she said. “He’s not the bad actor.”
Rewind – he copyrighted his network admin work??
