Comments on: No Suspect, Motive Unclear In Cyberattack On School Tests

By: Sedition

Sedition — Sat, 19 Sep 2015 23:11:23 +0000

I stand corrected. Good catch William…I glossed over that section.

By: William

William — Sat, 19 Sep 2015 19:13:50 +0000

>> we’re talking about a relatively rinky-dink network in the Escambia County School System

No, we are not. See first sentence of story “state’s computer-testing platform for public schools ”

I was an attack against the statewide network, not just Escambia County

. Escambia County’s network was working fine during the state outage; it was not a target.

By: Sedition

Sedition — Sat, 19 Sep 2015 18:03:02 +0000

Molinoman

I would have to respectfully disagree with you on a couple of points…in many, many instances, a person with a basic knowledge of computers doesn’t even know where to go to check what their subnet mask is if asked. I still think that it’s someone with an above average knowledge of computers and how networking works.
While I would agree that 29K Zombie comps used for a DDoS attack against a hardened target like a banking system, Federal government system or large business is pretty weak, we’re talking about a relatively rinky-dink network in the Escambia County School System. Someone went through a bit of effort for such a small target.
But you bring up an excellent point that I hadn’t considered. Common Core has a lot of enemies, myself being one of them, It still makes me wonder why someone that dedicated to crushing Common Core would choose such a small target like our county rather than a much larger metropolitan area in central or south Florida, unless it’s because we had one of the less hardened networks in Ecambia County. Of course, I may have answered my own question since central and south Florida are highly populated by illegal immigrants and socialist Democrats who shutter with pleasure at the mention of Common Core.

By: jeeperman

jeeperman — Fri, 18 Sep 2015 14:48:37 +0000

or………………….
disgruntled programmer at AIR built it into the program.
But when the culprit can’t be found, make up some hacker theory to explain it.

By: molinoman

molinoman — Fri, 18 Sep 2015 14:04:57 +0000

$220 million to design a test!!! A test that we are using to grade the knowledge our kids have using common core at that. How much did those yahoo’s make coming up with common core and implementing that train wreck of teaching? Sounds like our schools are big money for everyone but our teachers! Why must I still dish out money every week for pictures, year books, extracurricular uniforms and equipment? Some of those millions being passed around in the shadows should be going back to the schools and teaching what has worked for decades… you know the same education most all of us have had from the 1900’s until 15-20 years ago! The same education we use in our everyday lives… yeah that education.

29k IP’s is nothing.Using foreign shell accounts and/or zombie computers from other countries to DDoS is nothing as well. It’s actually so easy anyone with basic computer knowledge can do it. They try to make it sound like someone in a foreign country did this when it can easily be done from a laptop sitting at McDonald’s in Pensacola or an open unsecured wireless home connection by a war-driver.

By: Sedition

Sedition — Fri, 18 Sep 2015 04:02:56 +0000

29K IP addresses?
Sounds like someone may have created or utilized an existing zombie hoard to create the DDOS attack.
Who would benefit? I’d start looking at who had the most to gain in delaying the test. It sounds like we have the possibility of a very talented but misguided student that didn’t exactly feel like taking the tests at that time. DDOS isn’t the most eloquent of attacks, but it is effective.
Not saying that is what happened, as I’m not an expert, but that’s the only plausible explanation that I can think of off the top of my pointed head.