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.