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Tech worker gives up codes

By Los Angeles Times
In print: Saturday, July 26, 2008

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SAN FRANCISCO — Treat your IT workers well. Listen to their concerns. Encourage their creativity. But set up good checks to make sure they can't hijack your system.

That might be the lesson in the wake of the 10-day standoff between a computer network expert and the municipality for which he worked.

Terry Childs, 43, a suspended systems administrator for the city and county of San Francisco, sits in a jail cell, accused of tampering with the very computer network he was hired to maintain.

The systems administrator refused to hand over key passwords to unlock a multimillion-dollar municipal network, the pipeline for such critical data as the city's e-mail, inmate records and payroll. The city discovered too late that Childs, who had set up the codes, was the only one who knew them, court documents say.

For nearly two weeks, Childs held out. Then, this week, his attorney called the mayor with a deal: Childs would release the passwords. But only to Newsom. So the mayor hurried to the jail, and Childs wrote the pass codes on a slip of paper.

Experts say the case clearly shows how a key employee with enough knowledge of internal databases and networks can bring an organization to its knees.

"This is definitely not a San Francisco-only problem. It is every city and state and company using Cisco or Windows or Unix — in other words, everybody," said Alan Paller of the SANS Institute, a security training organization.

City officials allege that on the night of June 20, Childs threatened a supervisor and intimidated an auditor of the computer devices on the network, according to court documents. The incident set up a showdown with Childs, who left his job July 9.

On July 12, Childs was arrested on four felony counts of computer tampering. In court documents, the city's district attorney alleged that Childs had set up his own private network, bypassing city monitoring and security systems.

Handing over the passwords Monday didn't get Childs out of jail or persuade a judge to reduce his $5-million bail.

Some technology workers have expressed sympathy for Childs, saying his actions stem from frustrations common to overworked and underappreciated technology workers.