When Admins Go Bad

You've undoubtedly heard by now about the San Fran net admin who refused to give up sole control of the network, and thus was thrown into the pokey to compel him to cooperate. Network World has a great article that provides some anonymous insider info on the debacle. My favorite quote:

"Later in the e-mail, my source offered some insight into what may be at the core of the issue: Childs was so paranoid about the security of the network that he even refused to write router and switch configs to flash, which would mean that if the device was powered off, all configurations would be lost."

So, really, he's just practicing good secure computing apparently? Um, no. If he thinks that not having backups for configs nor writing them to flash is good security, or if he thinks that having single control over the network is good security, then he's clearly crossed the line from genius to insanity. My read is that "security" may have been a convenient justification for him when talking to management, but that his motives were really job security and making himself feel more important. This seems to clearly be a case of a big ego out of control.

The article also suggests that all this drama ensued after a newly onboarded security manager started pressing to get the admin access for the network out the sole hands of this joker.

So, is this net admin: a) delusional b) drunk on power or c) completely nuts?

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This page contains a single entry by Ben Tomhave published on July 22, 2008 9:02 AM.

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