So whatever happened to Terry Childs?

A while back, I came across the story of Terry Childs, a CCIE #14018 who ran San Francisco's WAN. I read quite a few articles about the incident, each contributed various pieces of the story.

Do I think he was overzealous in protecting "his" network? Yes.

Did he cause denial or interruption of service? No.

Did he deserve 4 years in jail? No.

The city of San Francisco made a big deal out of how they spent $1,000,000 or so trying to get the network back. Well, no one forced them to, so it is on them for that. They should have just made a deal with Childs.

I think when he was getting reassigned he should have just gone to the new job, the FiberWAN was no longer his problem, so who cares what happens to it.

Anyway, I haven't been able to find any news on him or the case since he got out of jail in 2011. Anyone know anything?

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Comments

PC509

ezykiller wrote: »

I know Terry personally and you have no idea what you are talking about. The whole situation was blown out of proportion.

Ok. I'll take your word for it. Thank you for sparing the details and letting us know anything as to why your word is even relevant. Much appreciated!

Ertaz

If Terry would have just backed up, this wouldn't be an issue. [video]

https://youtu.be/4SVaHxJhTmk[/video]

y2kcio

I was part of the senior management team and the Chief Operations Officer of I.T. for the City & County of San Francisco from 2000 to 2004 prior to Richard Robinson who replaced me. I was in charge of 223 staff and 3 data centers including all of telecommunications and network infrastructure. I hired Terry Childs doing the final interview after Herb Tong interviewed him. At the time of hire, he did not yet have his CCIE. He was able to study for it and passed the exam. I left in 2004 and the network was in good shape after I approved a $1 million upgrade to dual 6509's and new layer 2 and 3 infrastructure. Terry did a fantastic job as the lead I.T. engineer designing and implementing the new network upgrades. He had 5 network engineers under him with varying degrees of expertise. I budgeted money to send as many as possible to Cisco training as it was evident they were lacking in necessary skills to varying degrees. Unlike private sector, once a government employees passes a 1 year probation, it's nearly impossible to replace them. The employees were there before I got there in 2000. I do know that the Cisco gear had backups to non-volatile memory (NVRAM) and offsite backups. After I left, I had no idea if that practice continued. If Terry purposely did not backup to non-volatile memory or somehow didn't backup to the media that was rotated weekly off-site, then that is a violation of his duties. Other network engineers had the password as well but it appears he changed it and also disabled the console ports. I don't know why he would disable the console ports unless he was up to some nefarious action.

I can tell you that the above postings are from Terry Childs based on his knowledge of the City & County of San Francisco's Cisco network and fiber wan network. We ran a self healing fiber ring using five Cisco 15454's which became the City & County's WAN.

I was in close touch with his attorney, Richard Shikman during the trial. I told Richard I didn't think he met the standard of the California penal code for "denial of service". That statute is usually reserved for hackers that unleash rogue data into a network bringing it to it's knees. It should have been an H.R. employee issue and he did eventually turn over the password to Mayor Gavin Newsom. The first password didn't work because it was a little off. That's what happens when you're in jail for 3 years. He finally gave the correct password.

Here's the Terry Childs that not too many people know. There was a CCIE in the jury. That's a chance out of hell. After all, what are the chances of a CCIE ending up on the jury. That actually hurt Terry because even a CCNA would know that erasing the non-volatile memory purposely is analogous to holding the City & County hostage and dereliction of duty. He had all of the network configs on a flash drive. After he was found guilty by a jury (Judge Jackson was the judge), he was transferred from jail to San Quentin to serve out the rest of the 4 year sentence. Terry is a big guy. Probably could have been a linebacker in the NFL. At San Quentin in the common area while watching TV with other inmates, he punched out a fellow inmate after that inmate demanded he change the channel. From there, he was transferred to Pelican Bay. If you know anything about Pelican Bay, it's the worse of the worse. It houses some of the worse and baddest prisoners.

After he finished his sentence, his attorney called me to see if I could pick him up from the Greyhound station in Sonoma County as he was prohibited from San Francisco per the parole instructions. He stayed with us and renewed his CCIE by taking the exam. And then turned on me. I won't get into the details but the bottom line after spending some months in my house, I can tell you he's a social path. He says and does things to his advantage.

Maybe he's learned his lesson after San Francisco but I doubt it. Once a social path, always a social path. My 2 cents.

paul78

@y2kcio - thanks for the juicy but unsubstantiated hearsay. But why the heck are we still talking about Terry Childs. I've never met him and everything that I know about the guy is from the actual court documents so I won't comment on whether he's a sociopath. He and his supporters/detractors just needs to move on. In most industries, he would be considered a high-risk and he's never going to get another job in tech in those industries. This sad affair is now mostly historical case-study for academics and practitioners. And I'm sure someone will make money from writing a book - maybe even make it into a movie or documentary.

Heck - I don't even know why I'm commenting on this thread.

y2kcio

@paul78 - In my CCNA class 2 years ago, the instructor was still talking about Terry Childs as what not to do if you're a network admin. His lecture was basically to turn over the passwords to management if you're asked to. Not sure a book or movie would ever be made although I do have the juicy details of part of his personal life after he left Pelican Bay prison when he lived in our house and I can substantiate them. I don't see a movie or book as it probably wouldn't do well. I truly hope he has changed his behavior but that's up to him. Let me say that he changed the locks to the house and locked me out after my girlfriend and I were not getting along. He refused to speak with me and give me the new house key. I ended up calling Inspector Ramsey of the SFPD. Inspector Ramsey, another SFPD detective and his parole officer showed up at the house looking for him. Terry was in the east bay going through his storage unit so the cops missed him. Whether withholding the network "keys" or house keys, it's part of his behavior. One would think he would have learned his lesson about withholding password or keys after 4 years in jail.

paul78

y2kcio said:

In my CCNA class 2 years ago, the instructor was still talking about Terry Childs as what not to do if you're a network admin.

Sure. That's the perfect case-study. Terry is going to remain the poster-child and case-study for many things related to insider threats and will be marketing fodder for many insider threat security solutions for the next decade too.

I assume you posted to vent. Sorry to read about your troubles.

UnixGuy

y2kcio said:

... I can tell you he's a social path. He says and does things to his advantage.

.. Once a social path, always a social path. ..

Sociopath*