Spam attack Came From Familiar Emails
By Paul Menke
In response to an email-based cyber attack that infiltrated the school, Mashpee School District Director of Technology Mr. Moroney is urging students and teachers to think before you click.
The virus caused many students’ and teachers’ accounts and computers to temporarily stop working. The school has addressed the problem, but many are still in the dark about the details of the cyber-attack. In an interview, Mr. Moroney shines light on the subject and what students and staff can do to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Q: What exactly happened in the “email crisis?
A: An email came to one of the teachers which was labeled in such a way that she thought it was from a company that she was working. It said “please update your information so we can finish the setup” - it was very clever, actually - so she did that, and part of it was entering her password, and once she did that it immediately gave it (the virus) access to her email username and password. So, what they did at that point, they went in an read her subject lines and her contacts. Once they had that it was a matter of resending messages based on her subject lines, which would look familiar to everyone in the school. Of course, then you’d get people that would see it was from somebody else in the school and then click on that link and then they would be compromised. Then, if she had sent something to a student, then it would push into the student population. It was more of a spam thing than a virus; although it did capture passwords, it didn’t really put any malicious code on anything.
In response to an email-based cyber attack that infiltrated the school, Mashpee School District Director of Technology Mr. Moroney is urging students and teachers to think before you click.
The virus caused many students’ and teachers’ accounts and computers to temporarily stop working. The school has addressed the problem, but many are still in the dark about the details of the cyber-attack. In an interview, Mr. Moroney shines light on the subject and what students and staff can do to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Q: What exactly happened in the “email crisis?
A: An email came to one of the teachers which was labeled in such a way that she thought it was from a company that she was working. It said “please update your information so we can finish the setup” - it was very clever, actually - so she did that, and part of it was entering her password, and once she did that it immediately gave it (the virus) access to her email username and password. So, what they did at that point, they went in an read her subject lines and her contacts. Once they had that it was a matter of resending messages based on her subject lines, which would look familiar to everyone in the school. Of course, then you’d get people that would see it was from somebody else in the school and then click on that link and then they would be compromised. Then, if she had sent something to a student, then it would push into the student population. It was more of a spam thing than a virus; although it did capture passwords, it didn’t really put any malicious code on anything.
