Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Interesting. Many businesses put themselves in similar positions and dont even know. They pay for it sooner or alter. Sounds like the city was barking up the right tree and doing what they had to do. You cant be help hostage by your employees, no matter what the reason. I work with enough technical folks to know more than a few that are pretty similar to childs. I still cant imagine how he got arrested, and much less the 5$ million in bond. Tampering with computers? At his point (and for not much longer) hes PAID to maintain those, how is he tampering. A no win for everyone. I bet he's a brilliant dude that just don't quite have his ducks in order. Worse come to worse they have to plan some downtime and reconfigure everything. And come up with plans so they dont get caught like this again. Many other businesses and govt agencies probably need to take a good look at their situations too.
As the saying goes... if you have physical access to the device, all bets are off. So yes. Cisco router/switch passwords can easily be changed by changing the boot register, and just about all servers OS's can be "breached" if you have console access. Unix by going into single user mode and Windows through a number of tools.
I'm wondering if they're afraid to do anything because of potential zero-day exploits or time bombs that may have already been installed by the guy....
I'm just surprised that the owners of such a critical system would allow something like this to happen. Their IS Director needs to be scrutinized.... administrative controls should have been in place to not allow one person to have the "keys to the kingdom". What if this guy was cool but got hit by a bus???
*chuckle* Aye, separation of duties is a biggie in the business today, though many companies out there are severely lacking in security practices.
Interesting. Many businesses put themselves in similar positions and dont even know. They pay for it sooner or alter. Sounds like the city was barking up the right tree and doing what they had to do. You cant be help hostage by your employees, no matter what the reason. I work with enough technical folks to know more than a few that are pretty similar to childs. I still cant imagine how he got arrested, and much less the 5$ million in bond. Tampering with computers? At his point (and for not much longer) hes PAID to maintain those, how is he tampering. A no win for everyone. I bet he's a brilliant dude that just don't quite have his ducks in order. Worse come to worse they have to plan some downtime and reconfigure everything. And come up with plans so they dont get caught like this again. Many other businesses and govt agencies probably need to take a good look at their situations too.
From what I read, he seemed to be a bit arrogant and a little controlling. Ive seen that quite a bit, though he may have been justified in that as I have also seen a lot of very poor managers in this field.
Personally, If I were him and management started throwing its weight at me and I knew they were a bunch of idiots who were going to make my life a living hell with their decisions, Id just hand them the keys and say good luck. With a CCIE and experience in the field, you don't look for jobs, they look for you.
From what I read, he seemed to be a bit arrogant and a little controlling. Ive seen that quite a bit, though he may have been justified in that as I have also seen a lot of very poor managers in this field.
Personally, If I were him and management started throwing its weight at me and I knew they were a bunch of idiots who were going to make my life a living hell with their decisions, Id just hand them the keys and say good luck. With a CCIE and experience in the field, you don't look for jobs, they look for you.
That would've been the rational decision... but this guy is a bit beyond rational..
Hell, he has a CCIE.
The interesting part for me is the charges. They've charged him with 4 counts of tampering with computer systems... yet, I'm not sure they can prove that he tampered with the systems so much as that was just operational policy and when he left he refused to give the passwords up, which I doubt is a crime. It might be a breach of contract, but that's going to be more of a civil suit for the damages.
But, if its not in the contract... I think this guy will get off free... and as long as he didn't hide anything malicious in that system... I think he deserves it.
That would've been the rational decision... but this guy is a bit beyond rational..
Hell, he has a CCIE.
The interesting part for me is the charges. They've charged him with 4 counts of tampering with computer systems... yet, I'm not sure they can prove that he tampered with the systems so much as that was just operational policy and when he left he refused to give the passwords up, which I doubt is a crime. It might be a breach of contract, but that's going to be more of a civil suit for the damages.
But, if its not in the contract... I think this guy will get off free... and as long as he didn't hide anything malicious in that system... I think he deserves it.
Also, if it is a breech of policy (contract), then they have to show consistency in his breech. That is, if he breaks policy, they allow it (even condoned it it seems), then they won't have a leg to stand on in court. It is kind of like someone coming over and taking fruit from your backyard. If you take them to court years later calling out trespassing and theft when you knew about it the whole time, no judge in their right mind is going to accept it.
There are a lot of fancy charges, but as you pointed out, most of them seem as if they were grabbing at anything they could find.
This is a big problem in the industry. There are a lot of people who are in charge of departments that have absolutely no clue about the departments they run and they rely on a very small few to which they dump everything on in order to save costs for training others, hiring more people, etc... In the end it bites them in the rear.
I just can't side against the guy from what I have read. Ive seen this too many times to know that the real problem is the department management, not the eccentric behavior of their boy wonder.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
