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Unhappy Worker Locks Down San Francisco's Wireless Network

by Dan Reilly on July 16, 2008 at 11:12 AM



Hell hath no fury like an IT guy scorned. That's the lesson San Francisco officials learned after technician Terry Childs, 43, created a master password to lock everyone else out of the city's FiberWAN network. The system holds e-mails, prison records, and payroll files, and authorities fear he may have shared his code with a third party, putting the information at risk.

Apparently, Childs snapped after he was asked to leave his network administrator job for poor performance and insubordination. He's been employed by the city for five years, despite past convictions for robbery and burglary dating back to the 80's. To add to the city's humiliation, Childs is still being paid his $127,000 yearly salary.

At the time of his arrest, Childs gave up a fake password to police and has remained silent on the magic word. He's facing up to seven years in jail for four counts of computer tampering, and is due back in court tomorrow. Engineers from Silicon Valley are on the case now, so apparently he didn't use "password" as the access code. [Source: SFGate via USA Today]

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