Terry Childs – the Penultimate Chapter?

August 31st, 2009 by Julia Lim

Steadfast Paul Venezia of InfoWorld, gives an update on the longstanding Terry Childs “admin gone rogue” case. Remember this one? Back in July 2008, Terry Childs, a network administrator for the city of San Francisco, locked the rest of the IT staff out of the network for a week and a half. The mayor had to get involved, apparently getting (what was later said to be incorrect) passwords directly from Childs in jail. Depending on how you looked at it, Childs was a hero – preserving the sanctity of the network from idiots he worked with – or a villain – locking co-workers out of critical IT systems in some megalomaniacal fit.

At the time, I have to admit, we poked some fun at it, coming up with our own Top 10 Signs Your Network Admin has Gone Rogue. I mean, the stories coming out of the SF IT office were funny. But 14 months later, Terry Childs is still in jail because he can’t come up with the $5 million bail imposed by the judges. (An amount that is five times higher than most murder defendants’)

And now Paul Venezia reports that the judge in the case threw out three of four charges Childs was facing. The remaining charge is that he violated a California statute regarding illegal denial of service for the San Francisco FiberWAN. However, since the network was not brought down by a DDoS attack, there is speculation that this charge cannot/should not hold up. For now, he’s still in jail. Can the 14-month saga be coming to an end soon? Does Childs need a better lawyer? Stay tuned…

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3 comments August 31st, 2009

3 Comments Add your own

1. ukblogger | September 19th, 2009 at 4:01 pm

Actually, there is not speculation that the DoS charge should hold up. The judge affirmed the charge applies after hearing most of the case in bail and preliminary hearings. He threw out the modem charges because it is like proving rape. He said; she said. The prosecution would have to prove lack of consent. It was well known TC wasn’t following change management…the reason he got so meglomaniacal in the first place. But still, the judge said you won’t be able to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt and dismissed the modem charges. But be clear, a DoS most definately occured for 8 days, and probably $2M in damages to rebuild the system to insure TC didn’t leave backdoors at the expense of city services that might include rape crisis, homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters, schools, or medical services.

$5 million bail is probably because of the “imminent threat to the public.” TC was found with employee passwords, numerous front doors and backdoors into the network, finding out of state storage units, 9MM ammunition as a convicted felon, and $10k in cash. He was a “flight risk.”

Really, getting sentenced to 5 years might be justified, but if he had cooperated, he would have been out on probation in 3 days at most. It sucks that he spent 14months in prison, but he decided to not show remorse for it. Sure, his emotions probably let it spiral out of control…but he always had a chance to show remorse to the judge.

The law makes no distinction as to whether it is an insider or outsider, and whether you deny service to end users or other administrators who might be working on the system..or need to. It is very succinct and clear.

The world has a lot to worry about. Don’t sensationalize this guy as a martyr. Insiders cost the country literally billions in damages and attempts to control the problem.

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2. WillIBeArrestedIfIRefuseToGiveMyName? | January 25th, 2010 at 3:54 pm

The Denial Of Srvice charge is ridiculous. Nothing prevented the routers from being reset and administrative control regained. Anyone could have followed the very simple reset procedures from the router manual at any time and had full control of the router.

The problem is that the City had no one other than Terry Childs who was capable of reconfiguring the routers.

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3. Links List 03.05.10 | Sci&hellip | March 5th, 2010 at 10:32 pm

[...] update on the trial of Terry Childs. We’ve been following the trials and tribulations of the rogue network administrator who has been in jail a year and a half for locking co-workers out of critical [...]

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