San Francisco 'hijacked' passwords made public
Published: 28 Jul 2008 09:34 BST
The San Francisco district attorney's office has apparently made public nearly 150 usernames and passwords used by city officials to gain access to the city's network.
The list was submitted to the court as Exhibit A in a case against Terry Childs, a 43-year-old network administrator for the city who was arrested on 13 July on four criminal charges of tampering with the city's computer network.
Co-workers accused Childs of setting a "time bomb" that would sabotage the network the next time it went down, either for maintenance or due to a power outage.
Childs had effectively taken the city's network hostage by locking administrators out and refusing to give up the passwords needed to regain access. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Childs handed the passwords directly to mayor Gavin Newsom in a secret meeting on Monday 21 July.
Later in the week, the DA's office reportedly filed a court document to argue against a reduction of the $5m (£2.5m) bail set for Childs, who is being held in the county jail. Exhibit A of the document contained the usernames and passwords used by nearly 150 employees to get into the city's virtual private network. And despite saying the passwords pose an "imminent threat" to the city's computer network, they are now of public record.
A source told InfoWorld that a second password is needed to gain access to the VPN.
Credit: 'Hijacked' SF passwords made public from CNET News
Did you find this article useful?
5 out of 5 people found this useful
Digg
Slashdot
Del.ici.ous
Stumble
Reddit
