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Pandemic Could Make Schools Bigger Targets of Ransomware Attacks
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tdsan
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tdsan,
 User Rank: Ninja
6/12/2020 | 9:50:06 AM
Re: Interesting post

Our students often made attacks on servers with grades and personal data...This factor should be legitimate and free. This is the right way to identify malicious attacks - lafnian1990,

I was not sure if you saw that, but I reiterated that we need to strike a balance between the kids and the admin staff to work together to address some of the issues found on the network, not just malicious attacks, but attacks that were found open from untrained staffe members who place IOT devices on the network and don't provide a "secured template" (this is from an admin perspective).

The kids on the other hand (who have been identified as being talented) need to be put in a sandbox (once they have been identified) so they can hack away, I do think learning comes from various sources but I don't think the kids need to be the only source of knowledge when it comes to malicious attacks, there needs to be an oversight group (remote monitoring), proper training, develop a sandbox for testing, educate the students about white-hat processes (provide them with proper guidance), follow system hardening practices (DISA Stigs) and work collaboratively together to identify potential holes.

Now this is the way as a group we need to mitigate attacks from various educational sectors, not just one source but a collective source of thought and guidance.

The Hacker School Experience | WIRED

T
tdsan
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tdsan,
 User Rank: Ninja
4/16/2020 | 2:01:13 PM
Interesting post
I think with the schools, it is the administrative staff that does not put emphasis (money) into the schools IT, education and training. They are more concerned with the bottom-line as opposed to external threats.

For example, a number of applications that I identified still had the admin user name and password, no one took the time to change it and there are a number of applications and devices that are still set to default settings, they just take it out fo the box, configure it for the network and attach it for kids to use.

Ransomware Hit Over 1,000 U.S. Schools in 2019

In addition, the kids who are in the schools have been causing some of the attacks because they have found holes or vulnerabilities where they continue to exploit and use for their own purposes.

What needs to happen is that for every device that enters into the school, there needs to be a preconfigured template they use (planning will play a big part) and then deploy the solution without intervention from the admin IT staff (that is usually one person who has been appointed to do the job), provide adequate training to people who have done this before and look into other applications other than Windows (someone said that if the schools would create a team of well trained students to help with the Ransomeware issue, they could help the admin staff - a type of project - address the IT needs, empowering the school and the kids as well).

Todd


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