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



By Jaxon Van Derbeken

Chronicle Staff Writer

July 15, 2008



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.



[...]





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Received on Wed Jul 16 2008 - 01:11:51 PDT