Today I read the story of Terry Childs, a bonafide BOFH of the City of San Francisco. Apparently he was disciplined for poor performance and so he took matters into his own hands and changed everybody’s passwords on the system. Now San Francisco’s networks are in his control even though he has been arrested and the city has set a $5 million bail.
First of all, I find this whole story bizarre because since the perpetuator is in jail and the city has physical access to the machines then they are able to reset the passwords or reinstall the systems. Second, what the hell were they doing by giving this guy so much power over the network? It doesn’t even seem like he was the IT director from the report. Third, I find the city’s reaction to this mischief to be quite overblown. The network is still running, but other admins cannot access the system. This shows that perhaps the other admins ARE more incompetent than Childs. They could have resolved the matter in a more civil manner than arresting the guy. That probably just pissed off the guy more.
Anyway, this guy was paid $150k last year, and since he has pulled this stunt I doubt he will be getting any new job offers soon. I don’t know if he did this to spite his employer or to keep his job, but it is safe to say that he probably would be fired soon enough.
Instead of doing this, he could have just told his superiors the security flaws and problems he sees at work. If they don’t listen, then there are other jobs out there he could apply for. If I were really angry at an employer I would just pack up and leave. I have left jobs before where someone or something pissed me off, but I just don’t think it is worthwhile to plan some kind of revenge. Terry Childs may have embarrassed his employer, but he also embarrassed himself by being so unprofessional.
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5 comments ↓
Oh my. I’m amazed he’s not being charged under your Homeland security laws as an act of Terrorism?
As for me, that’s why I have a long term goal of six months salary in emergency funds, so rather than be malicious I can just walk away from an employer I can no longer work for.
Both party committed a mistake. I guess things like this should have not happend if the City of SF handles its people well.
“Terry Childs may have embarrassed his employer, but he also embarrassed himself by being so unprofessional.”
Uh. Like, duh. This post is so obvious. You might as well have just written “Puking is bad. It’s better than just exploding, though.”
No matter how pissed, Terry should not have done this. Pure vandalism, in fact he should be charged.
But some type of employers may want people like Terry and, from this publicity, he sure has put the word out
Terry Childs was the sole administrator of the routers for the FiberWAN network and had been for years. Of course he set passwords to protect administrative access to the routers. The department for which he (and I) work, DTIS has no written policy regarding who should or should not have administrative access to those routers. Keep in mind that control of the routing means access to data crossing the network including email, voice mail, police records etc. Would you hand the passwords over to any random supervisor on demand? Suppose you refused to hand them over – should you then be arrested as though you have somehow committed a crime by doing your job? If that did happen and you wanted to hand them over to someone even though there is no guiding policy to show who should have them, would you offer them to the mayor as Terry Childs did? This man should not be in jail.
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