E-mail sent by Harford County Public School employees to recipients outside of the school system weren’t reaching their destination last week, thanks to a spammer from Hong Kong and the subsequent blacklisting of e-mail coming from HCPS by companies such as AOL, Comcast, Verizon, Yahoo and Hotmail.
HCPS spokesperson Teri Kranefeld said the spammer sent an official-looking e-mail to employees, asking for their username and password. Using the responses from several unsuspecting employees, the spammer was then able to use the employee accounts to send out spam, boosting outgoing HCPS e-mails to half a million in one day.
The spike in daily volume, up from the typical 10,000 – 15,000 outgoing e-mails, was how Wayne Lamphere, e-mail administrator for HCPS, discovered the spam scam. Kranefeld said that HCPS immediately shut out the spammer by forcing all employees to do an intra-day password change.
The spammer was traced to Hong Kong where there are no laws against the practice, according to Kranefeld, who also said that the long-time spammer had hit other organizations in the past.
Following the incident, the HCPS Office of Technology warned employees not to respond to future e-mail or phone requests for their username and password, saying that such account information would never be requested by the technology office.
On the receiving end of the school system’s spam, e-mail companies reacted by blacklisting hcps.org, the e-mail domain of Harford County Public Schools. By Friday, June 11, the blacklisting had ended from all except Comcast and Verizon, which Kranefeld said should take another week or two.
I can’t express enough how sad this makes me from a technical standpoint. There is no reason that this should have ever happened. Without an administrative password there is no way a user could even possibly be able to send that many messages a day. The school system needs to have their infrastructure examined and the proper safeguards put in place to prevent things like this from happening.
Have you go to a school and seen the mini hubs hooked up to all the computers at school? Then the school systems spends $160k on bar code system to take attendence at the school. That seem like a waste of money and time. It doesn’t seem to me that the school system is spending the money in the right places for their infrastruture and more on flash.
The SWIPE system (bar code attendance software) is effective and does keep better track of students while they are in school, but the question remains is this the most efficient use of scarce financial resources at this point in time? I work in a school that employs the SWIPE system, and while there has been some benefit to keeping the average student in line this system has not deterred the hardcore truant, class cutter, or those that are habitually late to class. The expense of the system is of concern to me. If installed in all middle and high schools we are talking real money, enough to employ additional teachers, purchase other equipment used in the direct education of students, or money not spent at all. Mr. Tomback and Board of Education members need to seriously evaluate the need and fiscal propriety of implementing the SWIPE system at this time.
I would not see this as being worthwhile in a middle school what would be benificial is upgrading attendance. My wife says she still puts pencil marks on a card in the AM and a secretary spends about 2-3 hours hand entering the students abscences. I have seen the swipe system and you will never deter the hard core truants unless you take them to truancy court or lock up their moms and dads.
What I was told by a teacher at the school is, even with SWIPE system in place the teachers are still have pen to paper and do their attendence as required by State Law. Someone has to sign off on the paper attendence each day. So the new system isn’t going to save the school system any money. Just more waste of our tax dollars
I too keep a paper attendance record for my classes. SWIPE does not always have accurate records as it is dependent on teachers accurately entering data daily for their specific class, and unfortunately some may not be as diligent as others in this regard. Even the most diligent teacher is occasionally distracted and can make mistakes leading to errors in the data base. In addition to my paper record (which is the only one I put my faith in) and SWIPE, I also record attendance in our Easy Grade Pro program which is liked to EdLine so that parents can see grade/attendance/etc. records from their computers.
My concern is the redundant nature of all these efforts to record student attendance and the time it takes for teachers to input. While it may not seem to be much time it is nevertheless just another thing on the teachers already full plate. If there is truly a problem with lateness to school, class cuts or lateness to class then that is indicative of other more serious issues at that particular school.
SWIPE is an idea Mr. Tomback brought with him from Baltimore County. In this time of tight fiscal budgets I have a hard time justifying any extra expenditures for items or programs that do not directly affect and support classroom instruction. In my opinion SWIPE is a luxury we cannot afford at this time.
Bob Frisch
Candidate for the Board of Education
District A (Edgewood/Joppa/Joppatowne)