Hackers temporarily redirected people looking for hundreds of local school web pages across the US to a video in support of the Islamic State group. The FBI is trying to determine who was behind the hack, which hijacked school websites in Tucson, Arizona; Newtown, Connecticut; Gloucester County, Virginia; and Bloomfield, New Jersey.
The Bloomfield school district said their website displayed the IS video for about two hours Monday before it was taken down. School Desk, the Atlanta-based company that maintains the site, said in a statement that technicians discovered a small file was injected into the root of one of its websites. That redirected approximately 800 school and district web pages to a YouTube video containing an audible Arabic message, unknown writing and a picture of Saddam Hussein.
"It looked like it was some sort of ISIS recruitment or support video," School Desk founder Rob Freierson told NJ.com.
School Desk's statement said the hack also affected other organizations, including private and government websites. The company has added more protections and is requiring users of its websites to reset their passwords. The Bloomfield district said no confidential student or teacher information was compromised. School Desk said it was working with various investigative agencies to track the source of the hack.
