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Tucson school website one of hundreds hacked over weekend

Posted at 6:29 PM, Nov 06, 2017
and last updated 2017-11-07 11:34:28-05

Hackers took control of the Tucson Unified School District website over the weekend, plastering Islamic, possibly pro-ISIS messages on it.

Several hundred school district sites around the country were victims of similar attacks.

District spokeswoman Michelle Valenzuela, who said the hack lasted a few hours Saturday night, confirmed that TUSD received this message from SchoolDesk.

"Our technical staff discovered that a small file had been injected into the root of one of the SchoolDesk websites, redirecting approximately 800 school and district websites to an iFramed YouTube page containing an audible Arabic message, unknown writing, and a picture of Saddam Hussein.

SchoolDesk is actively working with various local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, on tracking the source of these website intrusions, and we hope to gain additional insight through their assistance and analysis soon.
All websites, website content, and user data IS secure and unaltered, and all websites are currently up and working without issue.

Our team will be working diligently to continue to strengthen our network, websites and all sources of access to prevent such activities from occurring again.  However, it should also be noted that these website intrusions were not limited to SchoolDesk exclusively, and were experienced by many other companies, non-profit organizations, as well as private, state and even federal websites."