Tech with a grudge accused of hijacking S.F. computer system

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 Tuesday.

Prosecutors say Childs, who works in 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.

Childs has worked for the city for about five years. One official with knowledge of the case said he had been disciplined on the job in recent months for poor performance and that his supervisors had tried to fire him.

"They weren't able to do it - this was kind of his insurance policy," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the attempted firing was a personnel matter.

Authorities say Childs began tampering with the computer system June 20. The damage is still being assessed, but authorities say undoing his alleged denial of access to other system administrators could cost millions of dollars.

I worked for a company as a sys admin that wanted me to take responsibility for the system without allowing me to have the responsibility.

An argument I always had with upper managers. That they always told me I was responsible for the system, but they denied me the authority to run it properly. If it ran well, they took the glory; if problems happened then I was responsible.

It's all a game for these guys. 25 years ago I warned a boss that a critical system was going to crash, but that I could fix it and needed the go-ahead. This system was the repository for all the source-code and changes for most of our application programmers. The boss told me not to do anything. I protested over several days that it was critical. It crashed. Then he told me that now he would get the funding he wanted for some new systems. Meanwhile, the application groups were bad-mouthing us system guys, as if we were allowed to do our jobs properly. The manager got kudos for "fixing" the disaster. From that point on I realized there were things to keep from the managers, and preventative maintenance to do without telling the managers, in order to protect the integrity of our systems. That philosophy served me well.

Here's an update. I previously said management often-times is the enemy - appointees of the mayor, or new hires from outside, without the requisite knowledge of computer systems.

Rumor-mill has it that Childs had a run-in with the newly-hired Security Chief. He caught her red-handed in pulling a hard drive from the former Security Chief's PC, which she sent out of the country to a friend in Europe. Definitely a no-no on several counts. Apparently the Security Chief had things to hide, and she broke the rules taking sensitive City information out of the country. Childs had arranged for mirroring the hard drive before it was taken, so even if she wipes data, Childs has a copy of her wrong-doing. That wrong-doing includes her installing key-logging software on others machines, including on Childs PC, in order for her to capture passwords. Another no-no by the Security Chief. And the proof is on that hard drive she absconded with.

Normally these issues are handled in-house, but the Security Chief called in the D.A.'s office in order to nail Childs, without going up the chain-of-command. She didn't realize Childs had the goods on her. Mayor Newsom is supposedly talking to Childs boss to get more info, and is trying to talk to Childs. The D.A. (Kamala Harris) is at odds with Newsom, and charged Childs and went public without discussing it with Mayor Newsom. Last I heard, is that Childs boss is clearing out his desk. Might mean he's being reassigned. He's my former boss, and always manages to survive these things.

Once Childs gets heard in court, all charges could potentially be dropped, and the Security Chief will be in hot water and could get charged with the original counts levied against Childs. The D.A. will have egg on her face.

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