Cryptosmith

The San Francisco story is sounding more like a techie’s personal tragedy and less like terrorism or hijacking or a ransom thing. Paul Venezia was contacted by someone in the IT department who knew Terry Childs, the “rogue admin.”

Apparently Childs is a highly talented admin who is obsessed with his network. If the anonymous source is painting an accurate picture, then it’s just an unfortunate combination of limited social skills on his part and hysterical overreaction on the part of his managers.

There really is nothing new under the sun, and I’m wondering if there have been similar stories in older technologies. Were there engineers who took over their locomotives? Telegraphers who took control of their lines? I wonder what obsessive protectiveness by a techie looked like in pre-computer days.

Posted under Information Security |