Prometheus 6

On July 9, after supplying his bosses with passwords to the system that turned out to be false, Childs was suspended.

The following week, with system administrators locked out of their network and Childs sitting in jail, a consultant advising the city discovered that Childs had rigged the network so that files would be erased if someone tried to figure out what the proper password was, prosecutors said.

Childs had created an ability to track anyone who tried to get into the system, kept his own e-mail server and had been using the modems locked in storage cabinets to create a private network, prosecutors said.

The consultant, Anthony Maupin, also found that because Childs had fashioned his makeshift system to run off temporary, short-term memory, a power outage - such as turning off the computer for maintenance - would mean full system failure, del Rosario said.

The system was rigged that way in May by a user named Maggot617 , a city computer analysis showed. Prosecutors say "Maggot" was Childs.

Tech rigged S.F. computer meltdown, prosecutors say
Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, July 24, 2008

(07-23) 12:09 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- Terry Childs envisioned the ultimate revenge on his bosses, prosecutors say - the meltdown of the city's computer network at the flick of a switch.

And it would come not directly at the hands of Childs, but during routine system maintenance at the building that houses the city's Technology Department.

The alleged plot was discovered before the computer network that handles law enforcement documents, payroll records, officials' e-mail and other sensitive city records was shut down for scheduled maintenance last Saturday, an action that would have vaporized numerous files because of a booby-trap Childs had installed, prosecutors said in court documents filed Wednesday.

Childs, 43, has been jailed since July 13 on four felony counts of computer tampering after he allegedly locked his bosses at the Technology Department out of the system and refused to hand over the password he had created.

In arguing against a defense request to lower his $5 million bail, prosecutors said Childs had set up more than 1,000 computer modems in locked cabinets and other hiding places, including at least one in a room at the Hall of Justice that even police didn't know existed, to tinker with the system without his bosses knowing it.

Childs didn't hand over the access codes to the computer system until a jailhouse meeting with Mayor Gavin Newsom on Monday - two days after the network was to have been taken down for the routine maintenance.

"He had a malicious intent to destroy the entire network," prosecutor Conrad del Rosario said.

Childs' lawyer, Erin Crane, called the allegation "spurious" and said Childs is the victim of bosses who resent his expertise.

"When they couldn't get rid of him," they created a false image of a "rogue employee" out to terrorize the city, Crane said.

After a Superior Court hearing Wednesday, Judge Lucy Kelly McCabe refused to lower bail. Childs remains in the city jail pending a hearing Sept. 24.