And You Thought Your Office's IT Guy Was a ...

[spurs_fan_in_exile]

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/pcworld/148427

- A network administrator has locked up a multimillion dollar computer system for San Francisco that handles sensitive data and is refusing to give police the password, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday.


The employee, 43-year-old Terry Childs, was arrested Sunday. He gave some passwords to police, which did not work, and refused to reveal the real code, the paper reported.


The new FiberWAN (Wide Area Network) handles city payroll files, jail bookings, law enforcement do ents and official e-mail for San Francisco. The network is functioning but administrators have little or no access.


Childs, who remains in custody, is accused of improperly tampering with computer systems and causing a denial of service, said Kamala Harris, San Francisco's district attorney, on Monday afternoon.


"The bail has been set at $5 million, and the exposure in this case if he were convicted on all counts would be seven years in prison," Harris said.


Harris said it's unknown why Childs tampered with the system. The Chronicle, however, reported that Childs was disciplined recently for poor performance. Childs worked in the Department of Technology for San Francisco, making close to US$150,000 a year, the paper reported.


City officials told the paper that Childs may have caused millions in damage while also rigging the network so that other third parties could monitor traffic, posing a huge data security risk. He is also alleged to have installed a tracing system to monitor communications related to his personnel case.

[ShoogarBear]

This guy will be Emperor of the Planet in six months.

[ATRAIN]

I'm surprised you don't hear about this more often. A lot of companies put too much trust on individuals. The last company I was with I worked in their Data Center and they let me go. I totally knew the in and out of their infrastructure and could have really done some damage to them if I really wanted too. I did think about it though. The company im with now its the same thing, there are a few people here who if they wanted to could practically shut the company down cause damage that would take months to fix.

[ORION]

I'm surprised you don't hear about this more often. A lot of companies put too much trust on individuals. The last company I was with I worked in their Data Center and they let me go. I totally knew the in and out of their infrastructure and could have really done some damage to them if I really wanted too. I did think about it though. The company im with now its the same thing, there are a few people here who if they wanted to could practically shut the company down cause damage that would take months to fix.

I didn't know Blockbuster Video had a computer other than the register

[ATRAIN]

I didn't know Blockbuster Video had a computer other than the register

LOL Hollywood Video man!!

[phyzik]

1. theres a reason us I/T people are s....

2. ING DIE!

[IronMexican]

I didn't know Blockbuster Video had a computer other than the register

in the words of Chuck himself "That was good"

[ShoogarBear]