Virus Attacks West Virginia Education Network, Renders it Inoperable

(TNS) -- A state public education network was overloaded last week by what some school officials believe to be an Ohio County, W.Va., student who used a virus to shut down computing services for about 20 minutes. The attack, known as a denial-of-service attack, uses bugs implanted on computers across the world to swarm a targeted network or website with useless requests to the point it crashes and shuts down.

The attack was almost immediately detected, said Sterling Beane, chief technology officer for the state Department of Education. Information technology officers were then able to pinpoint the source of attack by tracking its Internet protocol address. They then blocked it and restored service.

Beane said the source was traced back to an Ohio County school and that education officials there have been notified.

“We don’t know if this was a student who initiated the attack, or what level of involvement they may have had,” Beane said. “It’s my understanding that the investigation is ongoing.”

While denial-of-service attacks are often malicious in intent, they rarely are used for anything other than overloading a system, Beane said.

“These attacks are not designed to steal information,” Beane said. “They just want to disrupt the network for whatever reason.”

As for why someone would target the Department of Education, Beane has no answers for that.

“I would guess to be disruptive,” he said. “It could be as simple as someone was curious and decided to see if they could.”

Beane said little technical expertise is needed to launch a denial-of-service attack and that services can even be hired from computer-hacking companies.

“It only takes a few bucks to hire a botnet service, but thousands for us to prevent something like this,” he said.

While students around the state have started end-of-year assessments, Beane doubts they have anything to do with the attack.

“There’s no evidence to suggest that,” he said.

Denial-of-service attacks have become more common in recent years. Beane said data suggests that there are as many as 2,000 attacks nationwide each day, though he is unsure how many the department receive.

“It’s not daily,” he said. “Sometimes it’s once a month, and sometimes it’s not as frequent.”

Beane said the department’s networks are constantly monitored and that safeguards are in place to protect student and other sensitive information should someone attempt to hack the system.

©2015 the Charleston Daily Mail (Charleston, W.Va.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.