Rogue Sysadmin to Pay San Francisco $1.5 Million

Posted 05/18/2011 at 2:58pm | by Brad Chacos

Maximum PC readers probably already know that sysadmins can be your best friend if you treat them right – or your worst enemy if you don't. Just ask the city of San Francisco, whose FiberWAN network was held hostage for 12 days in 2008 by rogue sysadmin Terry Childs.

Childs wreaked havoc on the city... by simply refusing to tell his bosses his passwords. The FiberWAN network accounted for over half of the all of the city government's Internet traffic. In a stunning display of irony, Childs said at the time that none of his superiors were trustworthy enough to have the codes.

Now, almost three years later, Childs is learning that angry judges can create more of a headache than angry sysadmins.

Already knee-deep in the middle of a four-year prison term, Childs was ordered yesterday to pay the city of San Francisco $1,485,791 in damages to cover the costs associated with the fiasco. Now, we aren't sure how much sysadmins get paid for stamping license plates in the clink, but we figure Childs will be working nights for a while to come up with that chunk of change.

Tags:

Comments

Comments are closed on this article

Jimbo99

May 19, 2011 at 12:05pm

Had a similar situation at work a few years back. Only the guy provided User ID's & passwords to management. Not sure if the situation was a employee termination, discharge or force out, perhaps even a wrongful discharge. But the manager that received & was responsible lost that email, what a mess. Just me but what is the lifespan of a person's memory or even knowing where a password was written down ?

quickmana

May 19, 2011 at 10:43am

On Windows, there can be as many Administrators as the orginazation feels necessary, but on linux there is only one root and no other user identical to root. This means you must trust someone to keep this password. There is no way to make sure the root user keeps a specific password (that you may have printed and locked in a safe for example). Too much power!

Gumby

May 19, 2011 at 4:34am

The city is at least partially responsible for this. They must have some really poor IT policies if only one guy has the passwords. What if there were no trust issues and he had been in an accident and died? Then who would they sue? What he did was wrong, but their policies allowed it to happen.

KenLV

May 18, 2011 at 10:49pm

Sentences and fines should be based on the crime, NOT the person’s ability to serve the sentence or pay the fine. In ALL cases, the fine should be greater than the criminal’s ability to comfortably pay it. That’s how deterrents work. If someone is 95 and diagnosed with 6 months to live because they have cancer and they go out and rob a bank, do you say, “Well, this guy only has 6 months to live, so we’ll sentence him to 3 months.” Of course not – well. unless you’re Scotland and the criminal is a convicted Libyan terrorist.

THANK YOU for making FB opt in!!!!!!!!!

Keith E. Whisman

May 18, 2011 at 10:46pm

Especially when we have seen rich people fined far less but I don't know of anyone else that rich or poor that held a city hostage. He was fired or something like that wasn't he? And he refused to give up his passwords after getting canned?

HeartBurnKid

May 18, 2011 at 4:51pm

Honestly, this is silly. Do they think they'll ever manage to collect that sum from this guy? I mean, he was a public employee, after all; I hightly doubt he has 1.5 large just laying around.

Four years in prison seems like enough of a punishment.