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San Francisco's 'rogue' sysadmin

edesignuk

edesignuk

Moderator emeritus
Original poster
Mar 25, 2002
19,232
2
London, England
Irate sysadmin locks San Francisco officials out of network
Hapless municipal bosses in San Francisco have been locked out of their network by a disgruntled sysadmin charged with computer sabotage.

Terry Childs, 43 and of Pittsburg, California, was held on remand over the weekend pending the outcome of committal proceedings (an arraignment) on Tuesday where he faces four counts of computer tampering. Meanwhile his former bosses were unable to access San Francisco's new multimillion-dollar FiberWAN (Wide Area Network). The network provides access to confidential databases including payroll files and law enforcement documents.

Childs allegedly created a password that gave him exclusive access to the system. Pass codes he gave to police failed to work. Even under threat of arrest Childs failed to cough up the goods, prompting officers to take him into custody on Sunday.
Click to expand...
The Register.

San Francisco's 'rogue' sysadmin still being paid while in jail
San Francisco’s officials were squirming with embarrassment today as it emerged that they are still paying the salary of the banged-up sysadmin accused of locking down the city’s IT network and refusing to divulge the password.

The City has been forced to call in help from Silicon Valley, including engineers from Cisco, to help it access its own data after irate techie Terry Childs set a master password giving him exclusive access to the network. The city’s mayor says this could take up to eight weeks.
...
Childs is accused of locking city officials out of their brand new FibreWan network, which stores around 60 per cent of the city’s data after a run-in with the city’s head of security, the Chronicle reports. When he was arrested, he allegedly gave the city a bogus code, and has now gone completely silent.
...
But even though Childs has been locked up since the weekend, and is refusing to help the city get back into its system, San Francisco continues to pay his $126,000 annual salary, though it says they will convene a meeting on whether Childs should be place on “unpaid leave”, possibly as early as this Thursday.
Click to expand...
The Register.
 
hehe. Frackin' idiots can't decide if he should be on unpaid leave while he's in jail for locking them out of their own system? beautiful
 
It may not be that they have to decide or not, it may be a matter of them legally being required to follow their own HR policies and procedures. If they have a documented mechanism in place for firing someone for gross misconduct or criminal actions (and they probably do have such procedures), then they must follow their own procedure for terminating him, even if it takes a few days to do so.
 
Everyone in our IT Department, including myself, found this story far too amusing.

I too wonder what he had to complain about... 126K a year ain't nothing to sneeze at. :confused:
 
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