S.F. officials locked out of computer network

[n2doc]

Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 15, 2008


(07-14) 19:23 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- A disgruntled city computer engineer has virtually commandeered San Francisco's new multimillion-dollar computer network, altering it to deny access to top administrators even as he sits in jail on $5 million bail, authorities said Monday.

Terry Childs, a 43-year-old computer network administrator who lives in Pittsburg, has been charged with four counts of computer tampering and is scheduled to be arraigned today.
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.

He was taken into custody Sunday. City officials said late Monday that they had made some headway into cracking his pass codes and regaining access to the system.

more:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/14/BAOS11P1M5.DTL&tsp=1

[midnight]

1. This should get real interesting when it goes to court.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

4. until the worm he planted erases the court file.

Sorry, but this it really funny. I know it can be frustrating for those who are locked out, but, sheesh, people have been preaching basic security and techniques since I programmed with perforated rolls of paper. (IBM 360 in 1974)

[fasttense]

2. The first thing I learned as a supervisor was

that before you try to fire someone with access to delicate computer information is that you take away their access (and this may involve some major software and hardware changes) before you try to fire them.

Sounds like Childs' supervisors weren't very smart.

[PeaceNikki]

7. That's just common freaking sense.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

8. any network admin that has rights will frequently

give themselves a backdoor into the network...and sometimes for just this purpose and it would take a full security audit to find it and even THAT would probably involve the network admin in question so he/she could still get around.

it may be common sense to remove their access...but it is easier said than done.

sP

[comtec]

3. I learned that security and a large check should be involved

that he has no ability to touch a computer, etc.
when will management learn to pay their sys admins better?
126k is not that much considering what he was doing.

[MiniMe]

5. Does it make you wonder what all the outsourcing of networking to other countries

has the potential to do to this country?

[bananas]

6. The D.A. is hot.

Especially in a pin-stripe suit.
S.F. District Attorney Kamala Harris.