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IT Admin Locks up San Francisco's Network

A network administrator has allegedly locked up a multimillion-dollar computer system for the city of San Francisco that handles sensitive data, and he is refusing to give police the password

By Robert McMillan

That investigation led to Childs' arrest, he said.

The city is now working with Cisco Systems to repair the problem, but if it has to replace the routers and switches that have been tampered with, it could easily face a $250,000 bill for the incident.

The situation doesn't reflect well on San Francisco's IT staff, said Andrew Storms, director of security operations with security vendor nCircle. "His managers should have known better," he said via instant message. "Some safety nets and best practices were probably overlooked if one person could have caused this much damage."

San Francisco began rolling out the Fibre WAN about four years ago as a less-costly alternative to leased data lines, Vinson said. To date the city has spent more than $3 million on the project.

With administrative access to switches and routers, could Childs now seize control of the city's network? "Not where he's sitting now," Vinson said.

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