News19,135 Articles

July 18, 2008

'Network tamperer' faces seven years jail time

IT administrator pleads not guilty to network tampering

Robert McMillan

PAGE 2

Hom, who interviewed Childs before he was hired, said in a later telephone conversation with IDG News Service that as network administrator, Childs was entitled to have the passwords to the WAN's switches and routers. He was probably unable to notify management of any password changes because customized change-management software built to track this type of data "has been broken for years," Hom said.

Hom did not know why Childs is now refusing to divulge the passwords.

A source within DTIS, who spoke on condition of anonymity, painted a different picture of Childs. According to the source, just before his July 13 arrest, Childs intimidated the department's new chief of security, Jeana Pieralde, while she was conducting an audit of the network at San Francisco's data centre. "He started to appear at a doorway and take a picture and walk away, clearly trying to intimidate her, watching her through the glass," the source said.

At one point he stood at the door and physically blocked her from exiting a room. "She went around the corner and locked herself into the office and called her boss," the source said. "At that point we knew he had something he was hiding."

Childs is being held on a US$5 million bond, an unusually high amount for a computer tampering case. He faces seven years in prison if convicted on all counts.

Childs' former public defender, who stepped down Thursday because of an unspecified conflict of interest, said that the $5 million bail is excessive. The DA's office has sought $1 million bonds in murder cases, said Mark Jacobs, an attorney with the San Francisco Office of the Public Defender. "I think they are trying to send a statement about how serious they take it," he said of the Childs case.

The city is now working with Cisco Systems to repair the problem, but if it has to replace the routers and switches that have been tampered with, it could easily face a $250,000 bill for the incident.

San Francisco began rolling out the Fibre WAN about four years ago as a less-costly alternative to leased data lines. The city has spent more than $3 million on the project.

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Comments received


Cleaner said on Saturday, 19 July 2008

Theres alot more to this than meets the eye. Childs obviously was not a slacker but a work a holic. That he dis his job well is unquestionable as even the vendor Cisco can't get in. His job was to secure the network and no-one can deny that he's done just that. After some digging though it does not appear that he disabled anyones passwords. When it came to the routers and switches they never had access. What he failed to do when requested by his painfully incompetent superiors is open it up for them so they all the admins had access even if they did not have the appropriate skill set. Sounds more like insubordination if they want to push it. On the other hand they probably deleted his account after which the passwords he provided no-longer worked.

Cleaner said on Saturday, 19 July 2008

It seems a coverup here is in place for the new security official who came in like a bull in a china shop and upset him in the first place without realizing that this poor was the one doing all the work and actually ran the show. Can the idiots above him along with the new security chief they are trend setters for a new level of incompetence. Hire this guy back at double pay, make him the new security chief, let him hire a couple of new ccie's and ccna's to assist and count your blessings knowing that in this world of hacks and cracks you've got a network that the manufacturer can't even get in.

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