Chan's Personal Blog

A California judge on Tuesday continued the $5 million bail for a San Francisco city worker accused of hijacking the city's computer system, and ordered the network administrator to enter a plea on Thursday.

Terry Childs, 43, is accused of locking out the city from its FiberWAN network containing city e-mails, payroll, police records, information on jail inmates -- it was virtually an all access pass to City Hall. He was arrested Sunday after refusing to hand over passwords to the Wide Area Network system he is accused of taking control of illegally.

"He had the trump card and he could have brought everything down if he wanted to," said Ron Vinson, deputy director of the city's Department of Technology Information Services, who said the city's network has continued functioning without a hitch.

Erica Derryck, a spokeswoman for San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, said the defendant, who faces four felony charges of computer tampering, was a "threat to public safety."

Childs' bail was set five times higher than most murder defendants' because the authorities feared that, if released, he might permanently lock the system and erase records. "There is a real fear of that," Vinson said.

The FiberWAN network system is the major backbone of city government's computing infrastructure, connecting hundreds of different departments and buildings to a central data center, and to each other. The FiberWAN system carries more than 60 percent of the network traffic of all city government, Vinson said.

Childs has worked as a computer technician with the city for five years. He earned $126,000 in base pay last year, in addition to another $22,500 for being on-call to assist with network malfunctions.

Vinson said the city's data system has been functioning without error since it was discovered Sunday that the city had lost control of the bulk of its network.

"We couldn't access it, but it was functioning," Vinson said. "We now have the necessary devices in place that will detect any intrusions."

Vinson said the city was working to restore total access. "Every city department uses our fiber line," he said. "We are in the process of making sure we have complete access."

He said it was "unclear" whether the defendant actually accessed or stole any data, although he had the keys.

"He created it so that he had access to the network and blocked other people from having access," Vinson said. "He created his own passwords."