Bloomfield District School Website Defaced with ISIS Propaganda Video

Bloomfield Public School District issued an alert that its website, which Schooldesk hosts, was hacked around 4 a.m. on November 6, 2017. The site was among several other school districts' hacked websites throughout USA. The hijacked school sites included those of Newton in Connecticut; Tucson of Arizona; Bloomfield of New Jersey; and Gloucester County of Virginia; among others.

During the attack, hackers for a short while diverted people searching for numerous web-pages of local schools all over the country onto one video propagating ISIS the group of Islamic states.

After restoring its website, Bloomfield Public School District posted a notice on the site stating that for some 2-hrs early morning on Monday its website showed a YouTube video which was ISIS sponsored. Thereafter, at approximately 6 a.m. the district shut down the hijacked website while around 7 a.m., they restored the site's working and control. Techrepublic.com posted this, November 6, 2017.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is working for finding out the perpetrators of the school website hacks.

According to Professor of North African Studies Faten Ghosen at School of Middle Eastern, she isn't of the general opinion that the ISIS was behind the Bloomfield Public School District website hack. Prof. Ghosen articulated that ISIS usually did their propaganda in an organized and properly-thought out manner. Their approach was random rather than strategic. The hack displayed mixed messages. Further, ISIS didn't centre their target on Arabs only but all Islamic nationals, the professor added.

The Schooldesk web-host founder Rob Frierson said the company utilized Cloudflare, a third-party protection service in addition to its usual firewalls. Schooldesk stopped entry of any Web-traffic that tried entering USA, implying the hacker possibly used VPN service.

Schooldesk's owner speaking to CBS2 informed they had blocked access during the investigation's process. The web-host said it had increased safeguards for halting events such as the school district hacks from taking place again.

According to Bloomfield school officials, hackers couldn't compromise any confidential data belong to staff/student, although they mayn't regain their original feeling of security. Schooldesk stated they were providing their servers' replicas for helping FBI conduct the investigation.

» SPAMfighter News - 11/14/2017