SAN FRANCISCO CITY SYSTEM ENGINEER LOCKS OUT ADMINS
Various news sources report that an employee of the city of San Francisco's IT department had the only administration access into a FiberWAN system powered by Cisco equipment. He received poor performance reviews at work and was accused of abusing his access. He was ordered to leave work on July
9th, 2008.After being "let go", the city realized that they did not have access into their systems and demanded that the former employee hand over his account passwords. The individual provided false information and was arrested for four felony counts of computer tampering. Bail was sent at $5,000,000.
The mayor of the city met with him the following week and the former employee provided account access information to allow other administrators back into the system. While the system continued to function, administrator access was denied to anyone else until the mayor regainged access for the IT staff. The public defender's office stated that they would withdraw their representation due to a conflict of interest.