Sam Gurwitt Photos
An assembly at Hamden High School last year.
The internet has been down at Hamden’s schools for two and a half weeks, with recovery delayed by a seagull fried in an electrical transformer. But a light is visible at the end of the arduous tunnel of cyber-recovery.
On Jan. 9, the Hamden School District shut down its entire computer system after it detected a virus that had infected some devices. On Jan. 15, the district released a statement specifying that it was a malware attack.
Email is now back districtwide. At around 1 p.m. Monday, the district’s central office finally got its computers back up and running.
Hamden High School is next, despite a delay from another kind of attack: a sizzled seagull. On Friday, a seagull flew into an electrical transformer, shutting off power to the school, and slowing down the recovery process.
Nonetheless, said Director of Innovation, Technology, and Communications Karen Kaplan, the district hopes to get internet at the high school back up and running by the end of the week.
Since the virus struck two and a half weeks ago, Kaplan and other staff have been working non-stop to restore the district’s computer system. Insurance is covering the expense of the recovery and the contractors. Kaplan said that the North Haven school district has also sent people to help out.
Karen Kaplan.
“Every Windows-based machine in the district must be completely erased and reimaged and restored,” she said. Though devices may not be infected, she explained, the district is not taking any chances. She said that completely scrubbing the district’s system takes a long time, but it is necessary to prevent reinfection by viruses hidden in files.
A forensics team is working on determining the details of the virus, Kaplan said. She said the virus made files unreadable. She said they have not yet determined a motive for the attack but that one thing is clear: “This was a crime committed against us.”
“Fortunately everyone was safe,” she said. “Our user data appears not to be compromised.”
Kaplan said the virus most likely entered the system through a link in a phishing email. Phishing emails can appear to come from an email of someone known to the recipient. When the recipient clicks on links in the email, it can infect the computer with a virus. Kaplan said hackers have learned to adapt to spam filters and other protections, for instance by hiding the virus not in the link in an email, but in a link on a website that’s linked to in the email.
Read more about phishing here.
Kaplan said that a large part of protecting the district from such attacks comes in educating staff about cyber safety. The district already has a number of safeguards like anti-virus systems, firewalls, and blocked sites. She said the company the district contracted to help with the cleanup has added an extra safeguard to the district’s system. Once the cleanup is over, the district will decide whether to keep it. In the next budget, she said, she will ask the Board of Education for additional protections.
The high school was in exams last week, so instruction was not taking place. Now that teachers are back to instruction, the virus may serve as fodder for a science lesson. District Director of Science Tracy Stockwell said that there are some interesting parallels between the way the district responded to the computer virus and the way governments respond to actual viruses. She said she might whisper in some teachers’ ears about a possible special lesson, or extra credit assignment, about the virus and cyber security.
Once the high school is back up and running, the district will move on to its other schools. It anticipates completing those in the next few weeks. At that point, perhaps Kaplan will finally take a day off. She said she hasn’t taken one since the virus hit, though she has had people deliver flowers and even baklava to keep her going.
Luckily, in the scheme of things, the attack could have been much worse. “This was not a tragedy,” she said. “This was a pain.”