Hacker took control of US school district systems and mailed every student cancelling all classes

Dozens of families in the Needham School District fell for what appears to be a bad joke after receiving an email notifying them that this week’s classes would be canceled.

According to the report, the email appeared legitimate and appeared to be sent from the school district’s official accounts. Specifically, the message claimed that Pollard Middle School officials had decided to suspend activities until further notice.

Melissa Stein, mother of a child registered at the school, mentioned that she noticed something strange when reading the message a couple of times. “That’s not how the director would have written a message; there are a lot of punctuation errors,” she said.

Daniel Gutekanst, superintendent of Needham County, sent an email early Tuesday to the families of Pollard Middle School providing the correct information and denying what was mentioned in the previous message. Separately, Police Department Representative Chris Baker confirmed that there is an ongoing investigation along with the school department.

More information on this is not known at the moment, although cybersecurity specialists believe that everything is related to a cyberattack. This could be confirmed in the following days.

To learn more about information security risks, malware variants, vulnerabilities and information technologies, feel free to access the International Institute of Cyber Security (IICS) websites.