A 16-year-old teen accused of launching a cyber-attack that temporarily shut down Miami-Dade\u2019s online classes.\u00a0 The teen used a simple, easy-to-download distributed denial of service program to overwhelm the servers.\u00a0 Miami-Dade is the nation\u2019s fourth-largest school district.\u00a0 The teen is accused of orchestrating no fewer than eight of at least two dozen cyber-attacks.\u00a0 The first three days of the districts virtual classes were halted due to the attacks.<\/p>\n
What alarmed cybersecurity experts was the simplicity of the attacks.\u00a0 According to experts, the district should have been able to ward of an attack this simple.\u00a0 The student admitted to using a tool called \u201cLow Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC).\u201d\u00a0 This tool easy to download and even easier to operate.\u00a0 This was a point-and-click program that doesn\u2019t need a great degree of sophistication to operate.\u00a0 \u00a0This was the same tool that the hacker group Anonymous used a decade ago to cripple companies such as MasterCard, Visa and PayPal.<\/p>\n
Experts and law enforcement officials were shocked that the school\u2019s servers could not handle the LOIC attack.\u00a0 Official\u2019s stated that the firewalls on the district\u2019s computer network should have been able to detect and mitigate the attack.\u00a0 One expert said this attack was \u201creally easy to prevent,\u201d and the schools router configuration must really be out of date.\u00a0 Experts were shocked that a school district of Miami-Dade\u2019s size could be taken down so easily.<\/p>\n
The student faces a felony charge of using a computer to attempt to defraud and a misdemeanor charge of interference with an educational institution. The student will likely to be charged by Miami-Dade prosecutors and tried in state court, and not by federal prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office.\u00a0 The school is being encouraged to use federal resources, provided by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to secure its networks, including virtual classrooms.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.miamiherald.com\/news\/local\/education\/article245461020.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A 16-year-old teen accused of launching a cyber-attack that temporarily shut down Miami-Dade\u2019s online classes.\u00a0 The teen used a simple, easy-to-download distributed denial of service program to overwhelm the servers.\u00a0 Miami-Dade is the nation\u2019s fourth-largest school district.\u00a0 The teen is accused of orchestrating no fewer than eight of at least two dozen cyber-attacks.\u00a0 The first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25060,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.mis.temple.edu\/mis5211sec702fall2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.mis.temple.edu\/mis5211sec702fall2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.mis.temple.edu\/mis5211sec702fall2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.mis.temple.edu\/mis5211sec702fall2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25060"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.mis.temple.edu\/mis5211sec702fall2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6652"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/community.mis.temple.edu\/mis5211sec702fall2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6653,"href":"https:\/\/community.mis.temple.edu\/mis5211sec702fall2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6652\/revisions\/6653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.mis.temple.edu\/mis5211sec702fall2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.mis.temple.edu\/mis5211sec702fall2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.mis.temple.edu\/mis5211sec702fall2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}