Man who refused to provide passwords jailed for four years

A San Francisco administrator has been handed a jail term of four years for refusing to provide passwords to the city’s IT network. 

Terry Childs had been convinced of hacking laws following a break down with his employers leading to refusal to hand over control of the FiberWAN network in 2008. The network functioned for the 12 days that Childs held out providing access but the refusal to provide access had been found to violate Californian law.

The trial unconvered astonishing practicsed by 43 year-old Childs including a network of over a 1,000 modems locked in cabinets to give Childs access to the network unbeknown to anyone else. Most damning, however, was the evidence that Childs had set up a "booby trap" system in non-volatile memory so shutting off key parts of the network would result in total failure.

Prosecutor Conrad del Rosario said that Childs "had a malicious intent to destroy the entire network." Childs Attorney wrote to csoonline.com stating an intent to appeal. "The issue of whether his conduct is in violation of the criminal law remains a viable issue on appeal," he said.