Reminds me of a story

S.F. officials locked out of computer network

Excerpt:

A disgruntled city computer engineer has virtually commandeered San Francisco's new multimillion-dollar computer network, altering it to deny access to top administrators even as he sits in jail on $5 million bail, authorities said Monday.

Terry Childs, a 43-year-old computer network administrator who lives in Pittsburg, has been charged with four counts of computer tampering and is scheduled to be arraigned today.

Prosecutors say Childs, who works in the Department of Technology at a base salary of just over $126,000, tampered with the city's new FiberWAN (Wide Area Network), where records such as officials' e-mails, city payroll files, confidential law enforcement documents and jail inmates' bookings are stored.

Childs created a password that granted him exclusive access to the system, authorities said. He initially gave pass codes to police, but they didn't work. When pressed, Childs refused to divulge the real code even when threatened with arrest, they said.

He was taken into custody Sunday. City officials said late Monday that they had made some headway into cracking his pass codes and regaining access to the system.

Comments: Back when I was a Pastor, a young man was disgruntled with his employer and changed all the passwords and before abruptly quiting. He worked for a small insurance agent. The agent frantically called me and asked me to intercede. I got with the young man (who was not a member of my church!) and said that he needed to immediately fix this situation. He complained about how he had been wronged and cheated, etc. I was very firm and blunt and said he had to call the agent immediately. He did and that crisis passed. As an aside, this person was seriously disturbed. One of the reasons I have an unlisted phone number is to keep him far away from me!