According to PC World, a network administrator for the city of San Francisco, Terry Childs, was arrested over the weekend and has been charged with four counts tampering with a computer network. The allegations claim Childs set up devices to gain unauthorized access to the system.
San Francisco’s network is a Fibre WAN that connects buildings across the city and is said to carry 60% of the city’s networking traffic. The network runs critical city services including its email, web site, and 311 call centers as well as its telecommunications network.
As of now, city officials say that the network is fully functional, but city employees no longer have administrative access to the network. Ron Vinson, chief administrative officer with the San Francisco Department of Telecommunication Information Services said, “It was a little unnerving to discover that this person had created this fiefdom of access to our network.”
Childs had become increasingly erratic in his behavior and became hostile toward his colleagues in the days before his arrest. After his arrest, Childs gave police false passwords and then refused to give the real passwords.
The compromised network was discovered after a new security chief was hired to oversee the security of the network. After assessing the network, tampering was discovered and the case was escalated to the police department and its forensics team.
The city is said to be working with Cisco to regain administrative access to the network. If repair is not possible, the final solution is to replace the Cisco routers on the network at a cost to the city of $250,000.
Childs is currently being held on a $5 million bond and could face up to 7-years in prison if convicted.