back to article Primary schools hit by smut hack

UK primary school sites are being targeted by sleazy hackers in an attack that has reportedly resulted in hardcore porn appearing on web pages bearing school logos. Twenty schools' sites have fallen victim to the spoofed or defaced web page porn assault, the Times Educational Supplement reports. Many of the sites use Moodle, …

COMMENTS

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  1. raving angry loony

    quick!

    Put all the teachers who were anywhere near the computers in jail! Obviously they're responsible! Oh, wait, we're not in the USA. Sanity might prevail. As you were.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @raving angry loony

    "Sanity might prevail."

    Unless it was 'extreme porn' or hentai, in which case all bets are off...

  3. Law
    Jobs Halo

    RE@raving angry loony

    "Unless it was 'extreme porn' or hentai, in which case all bets are off..."

    Don't they still teach sex-education in school? Perhaps in many schools they keep teaching material is on the servers or their school laptops, in which case, the offending "pervert" teachers will all be locked up and the key thrown away.... but won't somebody think of the children!!!

    Come to think of it, exactly where is Mr Jobs inserting his head with such glee?? El Reg, you have been warned!!

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hentai?

    Why would Hentai be considered worse than standard rate porn?

    If anything, its less surely?

  5. Thomas Duffin

    Open Source

    Isn't Moodle Open Source? I'm sure it is, therefore surely someone will fix it very quickly or the schools could fix it themsleves.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    Hackers

    ...are not 'targetting' schools.

    This is bog standard malware which is more prevalant on educational machines because they're both internet connected and very poorly maintained - often infrequently by voluntary help rather than regularly by professionals.

    Our local nursery have 10 PCs for the kids to play the flash games on the Cbeebies site with, but 8 of the 10 are out of action because no-one has any idea how to fix them. I've been tempted to offer assistance, but getting involved in a bunch of poorly maintained Windows boxes is a fate worse than death. Out of sheer geek curiousity, I 'hacked' into one of the machines - guessing its password in about 20 secs. Once in I immediately noticed that the anti virus software was disabled.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    RE: Hentai

    "Why would Hentai be considered worse than standard rate porn? If anything, its less surely?"

    That's what they want you to think, so that when the prise open your PC and remove your private stash of hentai, you won't be too worried.

    Although none of the pictures were real, they'll claim it's kiddy porn / bestiality / foreign workers taking our jobs (delete as appropriate), send you off to jail and add your name to the sex offenders register.

  8. Brian
    Stop

    @ Hackers

    So U hacked into a PC u had physical access to, well done mate. If they were running XP then u wouldnt even of had to guess the passwords. If they were only used for access to the Cbeebies site then what would be wrong with a clean install of windows and only the Cbeebies site on a white list. Then u could set a restore point to this. Hardly a fate worse than death........

  9. Nicholas Ettel
    Boffin

    Moogle rep

    "We are not aware of any vulnerabilities in our most recent versions."

    It's good to see the wool is secured firmly over their eyes. Apparently, they assumed their software was perfect from launch... 'cause that's happened before.

    "It's possible that these sites in question were not upgraded and configured correctly, and >>spammers<< exploited this to gain access unlawfully, but this is not known for sure yet."

    Since when are spammers and hackers explicitly synonymous?

    The company mouthpiece should at least be familiar with what they're talking about. Is that too much to ask for?

  10. Orclev
    Linux

    @Nicholas Ettel

    I don't see how you get

    "It's good to see the wool is secured firmly over their eyes"

    out of

    "We are not aware of any vulnerabilities in our most recent versions."

    It's not like they're trying to claim there are no vulnerabilities, just none they're aware of yet. Reading between the lines somewhat what he's saying is that they know about security flaws in some older versions of the software, and it's possible the sites didn't patch up to the latest version, or that there's an yet unknown vulnerability in the current version, but until they finish their investigation they can't say for sure how it happened.

  11. Anonymous Scotsman

    @Hentai (again)

    Lookup Horihone Saizou (by proxy possibly), and say that again.

  12. Lionel Baden

    i would be so pissed

    if this hapened to the school my kids go to

    but nm i have to admit even as a kid i had admin access to the network because of a really crap shortcut the idiot IT teacher put in !!

    I would quite happily give my expertise to local nursery !

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    @Brian

    Admit it, you don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about, do you?

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