
Malware leads Minnesota school district to close for 1 day - prostoalex
http://www.startribune.com/malware-leads-minnesota-school-district-to-close-for-1-day/372623011/
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userbinator
This is really disappointing and feels like a regression. We've managed to
teach and learn for _centuries_ without any computers, and now problems with
them can cause schools to _close_? I've taught _programming_ courses without
needing to refer to a computer.

 _So to give tech support staff a chance to start rebuilding the system, they
closed all five schools in the district on Thursday._

"Tech support staff", so presumably the teachers didn't need to be involved at
all.

I'll refrain from further ranting on how {black,white}boards, dead-tree books,
and writing instruments were all we needed when I was still in school.

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SystemOut
If I had to guess it wasn't really necessary from a teaching standpoint but
they decided it was easier since nowadays they manage the entire school on
their school information system. Attendance, lunch room balances, etc. are all
routed through the systems nowadays and trying to do it all by paper and then
re-entering it the next day would have been a huge PITA.

This is yet another reason for schools to switch to mostly Chromebooks. Pretty
much impossible to get malware spreading on those things.

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pdkl95
Chromebooks protect you against some categories of malware, but they also add
a dependency on the internet and giving Google tracking data. While it is hard
to quantify these costs, they do exist and should be considered. In
particular, requiring the internet is a huge risk which may require even more
shutdowns in the future if the internet ever goes down.

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SystemOut
The SIS systems are almost all hosted these days so it's the same risk from an
Internet requirement. Google doesn't track usage on students use of
Chromebooks.

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kevan
Not exactly the circumstances I'd like to see my state hit HN with... My
guess: school districts up north have some extra days built into the semester
(usually for closings due to snow storms) and they figured it would be less
stressful for everyone to close for a day while they sort things out.

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coldcode
I hate articles with no details. It would instructive to know what type of
malware, what OS versions, what server infrastructure, etc so that others
might be forewarned. Of course I realize it's probably Windows XP without
patches but it would still be nice to know.

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jordz
This happened last week to my girlfriends brothers schoo, we are in the UK.
Ransomware attack that encrypted their NFS shares. They did not close however.
I _think_ they may have had to pay the ransom.

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cordite
Medical organizations have downtime procedures when centralized technology
isn't functioning in production. In general, things move to more of a peer to
peer set of procedures, manual intermediary record keeping, and procedures to
synchronize the system to the actions during downtime.

Education interruptions, especially in public schools, don't have the same
magnitude for needing documented resilience, but surely some people should be
able to just wing it in the class rooms.

Or do social time / pre adult day care like how half my public school hours
seemed to be.

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nommm-nommm
It's extremely unlikely computer use is actually required to teach in the
classroom. The malware attacked the district's servers. The ability to
administrator was likely what was effected since servers can control things
like door locks, bells, alarms, heating, and access to student databases.

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sathackr
_The bright spot, Scarbrough says, is no personal student or staff data or
financial information is at risk._

They have lax enough security to allow malware to shut them down for a day,
they have unknown programs running amok in their network, yet, somehow, they
are confident that no personal or financial information is at risk?

Next week's headline: Hackers demand ransom, threaten to post Minnesota School
district's student and financial info online.

