Hacker Tracker: San Francisco Facing $1 million in Network Repairs

Suppose you're the mayor of a large city. Let's say San Francisco. One morning you get to work and your password (mayor_123) is rejected. Hmmm. You ask if anyone else is having problems logging in and the answer is a resounding "yes!" So, you send an email - err - make a phone call down to your minions at the Department of Telecommunications and Information Services to get some answers. You are The Mayor after all. After a costly investigation, you're shocked - shocked! - to discover that one of your own network engineers has apparently changed everyone's password and installed "traps" which threaten to bring about a "full system failure" - phrases no mayor wants to hear. Especially in an election year.

That's allegedly what happened in the City of San Fran this past July. And as of last week, the alleged hacker - 43 year-old Pittsburgh native Terry Childs - remains imprisoned on $5 million bail.

Childs' lawyer says he didn't do it, which is generally good enough for most judges. But in this case, the judges (as well as Child's public defender) were all technically victims of his hijinx. So when prosecutors charged him with multiple felony counts of computer network tampering, suspended him without pay, denied him a bail reduction and (presumably) removed his name from the employee-of-the-month plague in the lobby, few eyebrows were raised.

City officials, as usual, brought to the taxpayers both good news and bad news from this incident, claiming that the system is no longer vulnerable to attacks (good), but that total repair costs could reach $1 million (bad).

If nothing else, this case serves to reinforce the value of having trusted computer network engineers on your side. Networks are only as secure as the techs who manage them. But don't take my word for it.

Also of Note:

The story mentioned that the city of San Fran, like most governments, is up to its legislative neck in debt. DTIS has been hit particularly hard by the city's budget cuts, recently laying off 17 workers and reshuffling several more to other departments (not including prison). On the face of it, this would seem to be very bad news, except that IT hiring - in the private sector anyway - seems to be thriving. You can read more about this trend here and here.

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