Superintendent Confirms Website Was Hacked

Superintendent of Schools Mary DeLai confirmed Friday the School Department’s website was hacked Thursday night.

At around 8 p.m. Thursday night school officials were notified by Wilmington Police that the website appeared to be hacked by a group calling themselves Team System Dz. The website was taken down and the incident is currently under investigation by school officials and Wilmington Police. DeLai says the website should be back online sometime Friday afternoon.

The hack has no effect on any school systems or computers, DeLai said in her statement, as it was designed by an outside vendor and hosted on an external system and it was the third party’s servers that were hacked, not Wilmington’s. Therefore, no student records or confidential information has been compromised. DeLai says district officials are working with the third party vendor to determine what may have made the district’s website more vulnerable to unauthorized access. Once known, steps will be taken to address those vulnerabilities.

DeLai says Wilmington Police don’t believe the Wilmington Public Schools were specifically targeted and that police are aware of thousands of similar reports internationally. “District officials are confident that there is no imminent threat to the safety and security of its students, staff, or schools and they look forward to welcoming students back from school vacation on April 27,” she says in the statement.

Team System Dz has caught the attention of the FBI, DeLai says. A Google search quickly shows schools across the country falling victim to the same hoax. The FBI issued a public service announcement on April 7 stating they are not members of a terrorist organization but rather that the individuals are hackers using relatively ‘unsophisticated methods to exploit technical vulnerabilities’ and are using names of terrorist groups to gain more notoriety than the attack would otherwise have garnered. The announcement goes on to say that, “web sites are not being directly targeted by name or business type.” This same group has been responsible for thousands of similar website defacements globally over the past seven to eight months, including other school districts in the region.