San Francisco Chronicle
"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." (07/14/08)