The Tangipahoa Parish Public School System is the latest in the state to uncover a potential cybersecurity issue. LSU’s Stephenson National Center for Security Research Executive Director Jeff Moulton says it is likely happening due to the systems being easy targets, but could potentially be more malicious.
“Potentially there are people trying to interrupt the polling because a lot of school systems are used to host voting machines during an election year. There are a thousand different reasons or motivations behind the bad guys,” said Moulton.
This comes on the heels of the news that cybersecurity issues in Sabine, Morehouse, and Ouachita Parishes sparked a statewide emergency declaration. Moulton says it’s not likely that the hacks are being human-curated, but rather happening due to automated scripts on the search for vulnerabilities.
“It’s not like some little kid is sitting in his mom’s basement hacking pick-your-parish school districts. It goes out into the wild and starts looking for vulnerabilities and it says ‘Hey there’s one right there, let’s go after that one,'” said Moulton.
Moulton says much of the malware is spread through email, so be careful when opening links or attachments.
“Stop. Think. Click. If it doesn’t make sense, or you are not expecting an attachment, certainly don’t open it. That’s what happens, you have to execute these files in order for that malware to run,” said Moulton.
