.... local government is the same all over, you gotta laugh (ptherwise you need to cry constantly and curl up into a ball and ignore the world).

[quote]Childs could use the names and passwords to "impersonate any of the legitimate users in the City by using their password to gain access to the system,"[/quote]

Yes, but the questions is, "did he?"

Check the logs people... if you can figure out how.

Admins in poorly structured environments often find themselves in possession of privileged information they don't need to do their job. It is amazing how willingly and frequently some end-users will give up passwords without even being asked.

Email received: "I need help with my VPN. My user name is mdouglas and my password is salguodm. Please fix ASAP!"

Can he help it if some people are morons? Isn't that the point of his defense?

Yes, they are proving his point by doing what they did... I hope his lawyer seizes the opportunity.

Unfortunately, the jurors may be just as technically illiterate as the city managers...

Paris Hilton knows more about Information Security than these guys.

So they went from nobody being able to access the network to anyone who stumbled across the court records before they were amended being able to access the network? Mr Childs would be justified in saying "told ya so" right about now.

Mine's the one with "Free the San Francisco One" stenciled on the back.

I don't really blame this guy - LOOK WHAT SF DID !!! put the user names and passwords on PUBLIC records?!!?!? What a bunch of dweebs!!!

I guess that this guys fear of the SF city not using the info correctly - was right!!!!

I mean come on - how many of those passwords where even changed after they where on public record? Not many of them, and if so - not changed very much!!

If the darn city can not keep themselves from publishing the info - how are they going to store them? Whom else now has access? - DUH people!

Remember that the "the four most-used passwords are: love, sex, secret, and..." - Hackers - the movie ( thanks IMDB)

You mean "Geez Louise?" (it rhymes)

So what were the passwords?

Think The Judge was locked out of his network for a few days? Maybe?

Being a former consultant for a municipality, You are the stool to the Cities noose when in that position. You have too much, WAY too much power over such a network. Part of the reason I stopped. Lacks of checks and balances, and if you try and give them checks and balalnces, they get scared.