back to article Cyber crooks shut down UK, US schools, thousands of kids affected

Cybercriminals closed some schools in America and Britain this week, preventing kindergarteners in Washington state from attending their first-ever school day and shutting down all internet-based systems for Biggin Hill-area students in England for the next three weeks. On Sunday, Highline Public Schools, a Seattle-area school …

  1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    Prevent kindergarteners

    I appreciate the Generation Aleph_zero (or whatever we're upto by now) are all hyper-connected digital natives but surely you can operate a kindergarten without server access ?

    Children sit in a circle and listen to me read a book not on a Kindle

    And .... George, Don't Do That ......

    1. Martin-73 Silver badge

      Re: Prevent kindergarteners

      Yeah I'm not sure why it would prevent it, unless the cctv went down and modern laws and stuff require it for pupil student safety

      1. An_Old_Dog Silver badge
        Big Brother

        WTF ...

        I don't have a sense of how things are in high-density urban schools, but I can't imagine how video surveillance of classrooms and schoolgrounds make the children "safer".

        Aside from that, what sort of gormless fools cannot, literally, organise and run a kindergarten class without computer assistance?!

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: WTF ...

          "what sort of gormless fools cannot, literally, organise and run a kindergarten class without computer assistance?"

          Failed whelk stall operators.

        2. Wellyboot Silver badge

          Re: WTF ...

          I'd posit that the gormless fools are brought up on a 'new & shiney' methods mentality, detailed problem analysis is just so boring!

          An awful lot of modern 'anything' is based on thinking that started out as chalk or pencil scribbles quite a long time ago.

      2. KittenHuffer Silver badge

        Re: Prevent kindergarteners

        From the incidents of false accusations by students against teachers I would have thought that the CCTV was in there to protect the teachers as much as the students.

    2. Giles C Silver badge

      Re: Prevent kindergarteners

      Well knowing people’s desire for automation, you could find that HVAC doesn’t work, nor does the lighting, or possibly the door access system is down.

      But then people want all these systems to be able to be monitored from anywhere without proper controls… rather than keep them isolated from each other.

      In some ways we have gone slightly too far…

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Prevent kindergarteners

        In my school days HVAC meant opening the windows with a long wooden pole with a hook on the end.

        1. MrReynolds2U

          Re: Prevent kindergarteners

          Often the opening windows were accompanied by cast iron radiators that were either off or burned your skin on contact.

          1. VonDutch

            Re: Prevent kindergarteners

            And that interesting state of burn on contact but did nothing to heat the room.

    3. Wellyboot Silver badge

      Re: Prevent kindergarteners

      Throw in a couple of chalk boards and you can teach anything to anyone willing to learn.

      That method works all the way past post-grad level.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Prevent kindergarteners

        It's not entirely sufficient for practical subjects.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Prevent kindergarteners

        Calk boards are way too complicated for kindergarteners. Need something less complicated for them, like tablets and cell phones.

        1. jake Silver badge

          Re: Prevent kindergarteners

          Oh, I dunno, I got my first pair of calks when I was about 7 ... it would not be a stretch for a five year old to have a pair.

          What's that? The AC didn't say "calk boots"? Never mind.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Prevent kindergarteners

          Typo 'Chalk' not 'Calk'. Anyway, the trend now of days, is to use dry erase white boards and markers, instead of chalk boards and chalk.

          1. jake Silver badge

            Re: Prevent kindergarteners

            Nowadays it would seem Internet calk boards are too complicated for many commentards.

  2. Tron Silver badge

    Grade F-

    quote: we cannot have school without these critical systems in place.

    Well, everywhere managed mass schooling without it for a century.

    These are schools. It is pathetic that they cannot function without tech.

    1. 0laf Silver badge

      Re: Grade F-

      Education today (in the UK) is very much based upon IT services and the internet being in place. Few teachers are equipped to go back to chalk-and-talk any more.

      Not to blame teachers for it all, it's largely political with politicians seeing technology as a fix for eveything in school attainment.i.e. to increase reading levels you don't need books, you need an app. Forgetting that a book is an asset which potentially can be used for a couple of decades without maintenance. An app needs an IT department, subscriptions, devices, batteries, internet, governance and maintenance.

      But books are boring.

      1. Terry 6 Silver badge

        Re: Grade F-

        There's a degree of truth there. More to the point,arguably, is that as far as the Powers-That-Be are concerned education is now a matter of mechanical rote learning and testing for scores, with the teachers there to "deliver" the curriculum and computer recording what they refer to as "attainment"

        They'd love to do away with teachers and have a few assistants monitoring the kids to make sure they do what the computer tells them.

        That should apply less to nursery ("kindergarten"?). Maybe they have high tech class registers and door access systems or something - though surely they could manage with paper and pen, and opening and closing the doors manually for a few days. (It's what most schools still do- at least some times) There will always be times when the tech isn't doing its job. That's tech. It happens*.

        *Over the last few days there have been outages in at the server that tells my iPhone what my solarPV is doing and another on the one that lets me set my burglar alarm. And should the wifi box in the corner of my living room stop working all sorts of stuff would stop doing its magic

        1. Paul 14

          Re: Grade F-

          "Kindergarten" is what we in the UK call "Reception" (once upon a time it might have been "Infant 1" or "Primary 1") - the school class for children turning 5 between that September and the following August.

    2. Lazlo Woodbine Silver badge

      Re: Grade F-

      We have a legal requirement to hold an electronic register of all students, this register is reported each night to the local authority, and weekly to the DfE.

      Many schools have cloud based MIS systems, but a lot of the cloud based systems are hybrid, and rely on a local server linked to a remote system.

      We also use cloud based lesson resources.

      So yeah, a school could run a day or two without their servers, but as each day passes, there's going to be more stuff piling up that will need entering once the computers are back up.

  3. Winkypop Silver badge
    Headmaster

    “we cannot have school without these critical systems in place”

    I don’t know how my school ever managed in the 60s.

    They never missed a day, worst luck!

    The only cause for ending a class early was when the air temp exceeded 100F in the shade.

    1. RM Myers
      Unhappy

      Re: “we cannot have school without these critical systems in place”

      Similar experience, although we did miss one day when the morning temperature was -23F/-30C. Mind you, school wasn't cancelled directly due to the cold, but rather because the school buses wouldn't start. I lived in a small town, and many students lived on farms far from the schools.

    2. katrinab Silver badge
      Windows

      Re: “we cannot have school without these critical systems in place”

      I remember school being closed when snow was at waist height [7(ish) year-old waist height, not adult waist height].

      1. Ian Johnston Silver badge

        Re: “we cannot have school without these critical systems in place”

        Ob.Calvin and Hobbes.

      2. Sam not the Viking Silver badge
        Pint

        Re: “we cannot have school without these critical systems in place”

        I remember deep snow in my youth. Although the roads were impassable, even by the horse-drawn coal wagon, school was not closed. We all walked to school anyway. Being sloped, the playground was turned into the most brilliant slide (sort of downhill skating in your 'standard' shoes). It became longer and longer until eventually it went out of the gates and on into the road.

        Lessons continued, I suppose something was learned.

        After school, the sliding continued until 'It was time for tea' so we went home, ruddy-cheeked, damp and bruised. As the days went on the slides became icy, faster and more dangerous but we were sent to make sure 'the old people' had fuel and food.

        The 'Register' was the master document even then!

      3. ChrisElvidge Silver badge

        Re: “we cannot have school without these critical systems in place”

        I remember school not being closed even though snow was above (my) head height (Jan '58 IIRC). I was 7 too.

    3. 0laf Silver badge

      Re: “we cannot have school without these critical systems in place”

      As someone born in the late 70s I'm possibly the last of the "go to school at all costs" generation. Yes I did walk to school through 3' of snow (not often but I did do it).

      But that is not the world today. If you did that now you'd be sued or publicly villified in some other way. And that world of today was made deliberately by the generations that came before me, probably for profit.

      I would rather my kids were taught critical thinking than the political ideology of the day, I'd rather they were taught how a computer works than how to consume apps, but that will be down to me not the school. Schools today are the most awful and avid followers of education theory not proven practice. And the budgets and targets set by government make for an education system that is effectively one-size fits-no-one. Yet everyone is said to succeed as they meet the MVP of mediocracy.

      Anyway I'm waaay OT.

      1. Terry 6 Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Re: “we cannot have school without these critical systems in place”

        See icon

    4. disgruntled yank Silver badge

      Re: “we cannot have school without these critical systems in place”

      @Winkypop:

      Where did you attend school? The summers in Ohio never got above the 90s back then.

  4. keithpeter Silver badge
    Windows

    armchair observations

    I suspect it was door access system that closed the nursery referred to, together with communications to parents (home/work mobile phone numbers, which parent or guardian is 'available' & address against child's name &c).

    The secondary school has IT systems out for three weeks but will be open from 12th according to OA, so will be teaching lessons without IT for at least two weeks. I can see why teachers needed a couple of days to replan 70+ hours of lessons each (much rapid digging out of textbooks?). There will need to be ways of contacting parents for things that happen during school day as well.

    I'm all for manual systems as fallback, and I regret the way the 'dependency chain' for doing even simple things like buying a bag of carrots has grown over the last 30 years, but that is how things have happened, I'm guessing cost reduction with 'just in time' everything. We need to think about resilience a bit more but, like security in the first place, spending on resilience is hard to justify.

    Icon: Off out to a food market where they take money.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: armchair observations

      "a couple of days to replan 70+ hours of lessons each"

      Also to work out the timetable seeing as the online version isn't available.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: armchair observations

        "Also to work out the timetable seeing as the online version isn't available."

        Don't schools usually do the same lessons at the same time in the same place each week? That should be a pretty simply task for each teacher to have input on. Or is it all "dynamic" these days, with "surge pricing" deciding when and where a lesson will be held? :-)

        1. Terry 6 Silver badge

          Re: armchair observations

          Larger UK secondary schools have "A week " and "B week" with a bloody complicated ten day timetable. But I have no doubt that they could manage some kind of continuity, even if it's a bodge, for a couple of weeks. But that takes the sort of leadership that's been hollowed out of schools- with risk-averse leaders following the rules slavishly in case OFSTED.

          I don't know if teh USA has the same problem. I'm guessing something similar though.

          1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

            Re: armchair observations

            "Larger UK secondary schools have "A week " and "B week" with a bloody complicated ten day timetable."

            Oh, is that new? I wonder what the thinking is behind having a 10 day timetable instead of a 5 day timetable? Back when I was at school, most lessons happened multiple times per week so I'm not sure what benefits there might be by having a 10 day timetable instead of a weekly one. Are there lesson these days where the pupils only study a subject once every 2 weeks or something?

            I'm sire there's a very good reason for it though :-)

            1. This post has been deleted by its author

            2. Terry 6 Silver badge

              Re: armchair observations

              How long, I don't know. My eldest is late 20s and it was there when she started high school. I assume that some stuff like music/drama etc. is spread over two weeks. But I've seen it in other schools too.Something about teh corect number of subject hours.....

              And there's this thread, found at random on the interwebs, about it ( from 2010). And loads of other mentions on other sites. One was from Reddit ( of course)

              https://www.edugeek.net/forums/general-chat/64527-school-changes-all-staff-student-timetables-2-weeks.html

              1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

                Re: armchair observations

                Ta. I guess I was even more out touch with changes to education than I thought :-)

  5. DCdave
    Facepalm

    The irony is..

    that to bring proper security to individual schools and kindergartens that cannot afford their own corporate IT security team is that you need to centralise and interconnect everything and support it remotely, thus increasing the vulnerability footprint.

  6. Ball boy Silver badge

    Years ago, a child went to school and their attendance was checked-off in a paper ledger, morning session and post-lunchtime. Signed by the teacher, these were sent to the school office for keeping. The system was fairly infallible and could be read by anyone with physical access - it was essential these books were brought outside during fire-drills as a quick and accurate way to establish that little Johnny wasn't hiding in under a desk somewhere - and that Mr. Lucas wasn't still in the loo having a crafty smoke!

    Fast-forward too many years and I had to attend a kindergarten yesterday for work. Access to the site was via a carded entry system with a camera, as was the entrance footpath from the parking area and another one at the main entrance door. These serve both for visitor-control AND staff check-in. The children's attendance is logged by staff in a class-based system so, in the event of a fire-drill, someone has to grab some kind of portable IT to conduct a roll-call (one assumes they've planned for a real fire taking out the systems; I wouldn't bank on them having pre-printed paper copies to hand).

    However: without the IT systems, not only is the school 'blind' to which children they legally have in their care, the back-end finance and HR system won't know know which teachers made it in that day, nor will the system be able to generate the required reports on teachers' attainment (they're performance-measured as much as the kids these days). While the former problems can probably be dealt with by a combination of pen and paper for the children and calling HR to confirm that Mr. Lucas did, in fact, make it in today, there's no fallback for the performance monitoring because that only really started once schools had the tech. to monitor and record it; there's no pre-existing paper system they can restart.

    And all that before Mr. Lucas has even walked into his room and told the kids to settle down. In short, a modern school without its IT could probably still teach kids - but they would struggle to know which kids, which teacher and what the lesson-plan was - and the longer IT remains FUBAR, the harder it'd be to conduct meaningful staff performance reviews...and they heavily influence future salary decisions.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      I wonder if they'll learn anything from this outage. After all, scholls are places in which to learn.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    KISS- Can’t beat that old system…

    Go with a more reliable system…

    It relies on proven practice, carried out by implementing a solution using the, "Primitive Emergency Non-Computerised Information Logger," (P.E.N.C.I.L)

    Along with the, "Passive Archival Processing Embedded Recorder." (P.A.P.E.R.)

    It is basic KISS processing!!!’ ຈل͜ຈ

  8. Long John Silver
    Pirate

    Should not teachers be made of sterner stuff?

    The outage in a British school is an inconvenience. However, aren't present day teachers capable of extemporising? Can't they work around their problem? Even should lessons planned for the next few days be reliant upon computer technology, teachers ought to be able to hold classes on interesting topics, else elaborate upon matters already taught, with reliance only upon blackboards/whiteboards. Also, written work in class can be issued and later discussed. Presumably, schools still retain libraries with a core stock of printed books.

    1. keithpeter Silver badge
      Windows

      Re: Should not teachers be made of sterner stuff?

      Volunteer opportunities in your local adult education centre will probably be available (subject to a 'basic disclosure' from DBS). Nice people, usually only 20 in a class, most volunteers find the experience rewarding. They also often express surprise at what the role of a teacher requires these days.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Leaving windows open gets you robbed

    More lemmings jumping off cliffs.

  10. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Coat

    Dumbing Down

    When I was in school (yes I'm an 'elderly') the teachers got to know the kids pretty quickly both by sight and name, and so did the dinner ladies - previously mentioned. If it was needed, a roll call could easily have been done without any paperwork at all.

    Years later when I was on a small social club committee I was astonished to realise that I could identify all 150 members, within the first month! I wasn't even trying to, and understand I am far from alone in that.

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