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The Inside Story On the San Francisco Network Hijacking
snydeq writes "A source with direct knowledge of San Francisco's IT infrastructure has tipped off Paul Venezia to the real story behind Terry Childs' lockout of San Francisco's network, providing a detailed account of the city's FiberWAN, interdepartmental politics, and Terry Childs himself. Childs pleaded not guilty to charges of tampering yesterday and is being held on $5 million bail. According to the source, Childs' purview was limited to the city's FiberWAN — a network he himself built and, believing no one competent enough to touch the network but himself, guarded religiously, sharing details with no one, including routing configuration and log-in information. Childs was so concerned about the network's security that he refused even to write router and switch configurations to flash. But what may prove difficult for the prosecution in its case against Childs is that his restricted access to the network was widely known and accepted among managers and the city's other network engineers. Venezia, who has been suspicious of the official story from the start, suspects that the Childs case may be that 'of an overprotective admin who believed he was protecting the network — and by extension, the city — from other administrators whom he considered inferior, and perhaps even dangerous.' Further evidence is that fact that the network, from what Venezia understands, has been running smoothly since Childs' arrest."
So instead of letting the air out of the car's tires, a car he loved, he simply wouldn't give the keys to dangerous drivers.
"He's using a quantum encryption scheme! That'll take hours to break!"
I find that easy to believe. Even easier to believe that they didn't know this was the case, or knew but did not understand.
IANAL, but isn't $5 million US for bail a bit excessive for this?
That's my first reaction to the news. Critical infrastructure should have redundancy everywhere, including the support staff.
To give a stupid but obvious example what if Childs was run over by a car? OK, he wouldn't care but all the rest of SF would.
So they should never have put the network online until the information was in several places (the brains of several people if formal electronic/paper records were too inflexible).
Stll, this sounds like political infighting more than ever. Given the situation why were they trying to fire a critical person like Childs? Sounds like some bureaucrat with an ego as big as Childs would be involved to cause this, rather than Childs "going rogue". And he (the bureaucrat) was more skilled in the political game. Of course this person would be covering his tracks, and not be obvious in any way. So Childs and the whole of SF lost. His firing does not make sense otherwise, given his critical position.
Ah, the fun of weaving conspiracy theories :-)
We still don't know all the details. Perhaps all the accusations are trumped. But, if when his performance became a question he started hiding backups, monitoring his managers' email exchanges and is now not cooperating, he's definitely a criminal.
How can you possibly argue otherwise? Sure, he's the network admin, but does that authorize him to read people's email without authorization?
Sure, he's the admin, but does that give him the right to create a situation that basically takes the city's IT infrastructure hostage?
I'm not questioning that his superiors should share the larger part of the blame here. But I can't see how he's not at all at fault.
People who fiddle with government machines get let of and win people elections! Those that STOP people fiddling with Machines get locked up on $5 mill bail....:D:D
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
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How can you possibly argue otherwise? Sure, he's the network admin, but does that authorize him to read people's email without authorization?
Not at all. But then charge him with that, not some pseudo-terrorist computer tampering charge.
Never worked for the government, have you? ;)
Management is where people who are too incompetent for technical work go. No one gets fired, they get moved to different departments. As a last resort, they get assigned to 'special projects' for about a year in the hopes that everyone will forget what an imbecile they are, and will be safe to move back into the management structure.
It seems pretty idiotic to me. I still think they should throw this guy in the clink, but at the same time, I think some of his superiors should be told to collect their belongings and then have security escort them through the front door, because there was a colossal breakdown of management here if a single guy was permitted to basically hold the entire network's architecture in his head.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If the others were so stupid as to not do anything about this waaaaayyyyy before, then maybe, just maaayyyybe he was right. They are too stupid to be let loose on the network. :-D
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
This analogy is spot on, and whoever modded it off-topic obviously is incapable of understanding the topic and shouldn't have had the keys to the mod-car in the first place.
Infuriate left and right
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modded +3, Informative.
but this attitude sets off alarms.
exposing a geek who despises his supervisors and is used to thinking of the server rooms as his personal playground.
Consider mentoring. The God complex management style rarely works out well in the end.