A former San Francisco network administrator faces up to five years in jail after being found guilty of tampering with the city government’s computer network.
Terry Childs will be sentenced on June 14 after being found guilty of denial-of-service charges after a series of computer security violations in 2008.
Childs, reportedly in despite with city officials, breached internal security procedures to lock city officials out of their own networks and refused to disclose passwords.
Before the incident, Childs had spent much of his time building and managing the city’s FiberWAN infrastructure, Childs responded to the dispute by locking down the network, preventing management from accessing the network.
The resulting dispute saw Childs arrested and San Francisco left without access to around 60% of the city’s stored data. Childs argued that he was protecting the system from possible damage at the hands of fellow administrators unfamiliar with the FiberWAN deployment.
More than a week after the crisis began, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsome was able to defuse the situation by visiting Childs in jail and retrieving the needed passwords to regain access.
