San Francisco scrambles to rebound after being held cyber-hostage

The alleged takeover of the City by the Bay may sound totally rare, but, unfortunately, it has happened before that disgruntled employees take to modern technology as a means for revenge.

City tech employee Terry Childs, allegedly modified the city system so that he was the only one with top level clearances. The city is still in a tizzy trying to regain control of their new fiber optic municipal network that handles everything from the mayor’s email to electronic court records. Childs, who was arrested on Sunday, is still being held on $5 million bail, after allegedly refusing to hand over the passwords. He at first did supply some, but they turned out to be bogus.

It isn’t even clear why he did what he did, although it’s been said that in days leading up to his arrest, his behavior towards his colleagues was becoming erratic. A new security chief had been brought in to oversee the group’s security, and over the past few weeks some evidence of tampering had been found. It was escalated to the police, who in turn brought in their own forensics team to investigate their network.