For two days in a row, Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS) students and teachers haven’t been able to access the district’s new e-learning website — for a county that is doing virtual back-to-school, this has unleashed chaos.
Parents are angry. Teachers are exhausted. Students are desperate. Some parents and students alike have taken to social media to complain, with some asking for Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho’s resignation, who stated yesterday that an M-DCPS software malfunction affected the district’s servers on Monday.
But after the district’s disastrous second day of virtual school, M-DCPS announced at a press conference something that many didn’t expect: the fourth largest district in the nation, as stated Superintendent Carvalho, was brought down Tuesday by a cyber attack.
This was the second Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack that Miami-Dade County Public Schools has ever had.
“These DDOS attacks are complex and they are not unknown to us,” said Superintendent Carvalho, explaining that the FBI and CIA are investigating the case.
Comcast, the district’s service provider, failed to state the disruption, which they later on released a statement to apologize to M-DCPS “for their actions or inactions today at 3:00 p.m.
“Comcast has a longstanding relationship with the Miami Dade County Public Schools and we place tremendous value on the partnership we have built together over time. We have worked together to connect tens of thousands of families to the internet, so any issue that could impact internet access is one that we take very seriously. Comcast became aware of an issue impacting the Miami Dade School District network, causing many families to be unable to access the learning site as the school day began. Given this took place during the beginning of school, we understand how important connectivity is for virtual learning during this unprecedented time. We are continuing to monitor the situation and are working with the school district and law enforcement to ensure this doesn’t happen again. We sincerely apologize to the families, teachers and students who were kept offline.”
Comcast’s failed attempt at notifying Miami-Dade luckily did not penetrate the district’s network security or firewall, only the outside perimeter was “congested,” which prevented teachers and students from accessing their portals and classes.
This was a “malicious attempt, malicious well-orchestrated complex attempt at derailing the connection which is essential for our students and teachers” said Carvalho, stating that the attack was luckily not efficient enough.
Comcast “received a subpoena for all of the records that the federal agencies and our law enforcement will need to determine the origin and identity of the perpetrator” said Carvalho.
Miami-Dade Schools Police Chief, Edwin Lopez, is also trying to work on identifying the offender who contributed to such an attack. “We are at the final stages of implementing a plan to be able to bring them justice. We will identify and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law” said Chief Edwin Lopez.
Carvalho also explained once again what caused the website to crash on Monday, saying that not only everybody getting on at the same time affected Miami-Dade’s systems, but a “catastrophic failure” did too — a failure from the side of M-DCPS.
Carvalho said “the root cause was [that the] system’s operating hardware that ran the switch had bad code and required an upgrade.” Carvalho said he worked with Cisco to fix the issue.
As for any possible issues that may occur tomorrow, Superintendent Carvalho had one thing to say: “I cannot promise you that another DDOS attack will not happen next morning.”
Comcast will be ready for any disturbance that may occur tomorrow morning, and Comcast has said strategies in place that “will not be disclosed” for safety purposes. Chief Edwin Lopez says “we have been working extensively for many long hours, not only with the school police agents but with the federal bureau.”
