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Virus Eats School District's Homework
theodp writes "Forget about 'snow days' — the kids in the Lake Washington School District could probably use a few 'virus days.' Laptops issued to each student in grades 6-12 were supposed to accelerate learning ('Schools that piloted the laptops found that students stayed engaged nad [sic] organized whiel [sic] boosting creativity,' according to the district's Success Stories), but GeekWire reports that a computer virus caused havoc for the district as it worked its way through the Windows 7 computers, disrupting class and costing the district money — five temporary IT staff members were hired to help contain the virus. Among the reasons cited for the school district's choice of PCs over Macs were the proximity to Microsoft HQ (Redmond is in the district), Microsoft's involvement in supporting local and national education, and last but not least, cost. In the past, the Lake Washington School District served as a Poster Child of sorts for Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Group."
Looks like the school district leaned a valuable lesson ... oh wait!
Among the reasons cited for the school district's choice of PCs over Mac's were (...) cost.
And yet Linux was never an option? Avoided Apple to reduce the cost and ended up hiring 5 people to contain the damage that came as a consequence of their choice... way to go!
The trust is for the media cartels. They don't trust users not to copy their media, so Microsoft sold them the idea of computing they could trust.
The "End to End Trust" initiative is all about this - removing the computer's trust that it's owner should have control, and handing that trust to the people with the root signing keys - Microsoft will become indispensable to the entire Windows software ecosystem. The ultimate rent-seeking behaviour.
The Computer doesn't trust you.
...and last but not least, cost.
Wait...Windows 7-Ready hardware, Windows 7 Licensing Costs AND 5 additional IT-employees and they choose Microsoft because "it costs less"?! I seriously need to get a job in the public sector, seems like they can jack off all day or something.
Just imagine how many new IT jobs this would create.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic
Among other things, TFA implies that this is because they were using 'PCs instead of Macs' [sic].
While it's true that OSX has way less malware than Windows, the main cause of malware infections is the users who click anything that's offered to them without thinking.
You can hide behind less popular operating systems, but the sad truth is that the average computer user simply can't handle the freedom of being able to do whatever they want, without messing things up.
So the solution is better tech education or--the cheaper way--locking things down. Both MS and Apple are doing it in their mobile OSs and they're starting to implement this in their desktop OSs as well.
Of course, the IT could also have locked Windows down with Group Policy and SRP, so that it would be pretty much impossible to install anything (unless reinstalling the OS).
Instead, they relied on some crappy antivirus (Sophos) and I wouldn't be surprised if the users were given admin rights as well.
I'm not a Microsoft fan at all (and they might have played dirty to get the school to use Windows), but the real story here is IT staff incompetence and the poor education of the average computer user.
Journalists raised a hue and cry about the end times because TC was implemented by Microsoft.
In the meantime, Apple came in and implemented the same spec and the same journalists fell over each other extolling the virtues of the walled garden.
This space for rent.
Hire COMPETENT IT staff to begin with? Honestly, what kind of amateur hour school is this? having to hire temp IT staff to deal with it, really? how about actually staffing your departments properly and with competent staff?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Perhaps it's the difference between inviting people into your walled garden, and building a wall around the people in your already highly populated garden?
I have given my kids restricted user accounts on their Windows computers and so far they haven't managed to infect the computers. Setting up a Windows machine with restricted accounts, Foxit reader as PDF reader, Chrome as web browser and flash block plugin installed has done the trick for me so far. For the same price as a Mac I get a PC + iPad + spare change.
Before we blame the IT staff, let me give this some perspective. (I have nine years experience as a teacher & tech director in a public K-12 US school.)
First, I'm reasonably confident in saying that, if proper Group Policy was implemented and user restrictions put in place, this never would have happened. Second, this is a HUGE school district with over 50 schools. They can certainly afford a public liaison (who was speaking on behalf of the district in the local broadcast), and I'm sure they have a large IT staff...I'm guessing in the neighborhood of 20-30 employees. Though public school districts would pay less than Microsoft right next door, given the sheer numbers there must be at least a few people on that staff that know how to accomplish this and as well of its value in preventing this sort of mess from happening.
With that in mind, here's what I've concluded: There is likely someone with leadership authority who told IT staff to let students manage their own laptops and have admin privileges. Given the size of the district, the directive either came from the district technology committee, or directly from the superintendent, school board, or both. All it would take is a number of parents to ignorantly complain to a "friend on the board" that "Johnny's laptop is broken - he can't install the programs he needs to do his homework" for the school board to direct the superintendent to "fix the issue." Likely this was a top-down order; I simply cannot imagine a tech staff that large to be that incompetent on their own.
What bothers me about this is how they're going about trying to fix the problem. If I had a worst-case mass-deployment of a virus at my school, I would just recall all the equipment, reimage everything, and redeploy a week later. I would issue a directive to all the staff that the equipment is down for one week to be cleaned, and make due without it. It's either one week of downtime or months of unreliability. If teachers would know that they have the option of either the problem being fixed in a week or the problem being "managed" over months, they would all take the week's downtime in a heartbeat.
One other question I have for those here: have you ever encountered a Windows virus that, as they claim, just "spreads on the network" without user initiation of the virus by clicking on an executable, script, or loading an infected webpage? I think the much more likely scenario is that this virus is being spread through usb flash disks, but I'm not sure whether that explanation was too technical for staff to understand.
And mine have full blown admin rights for their own PCs. How else are they going to learn about all the nasties on the internet? Better they make the fuck-ups today, when their machines aren't doing anything important, then when they turn into adults with credit cards, bank accounts and other meaningful online accounts.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
You were the last compentent person to touch their system. The only one who knew how to make changes. They know they changed nothing. How could this problem exist, it requires a change to have been made?
Computer Voo Doo. It has to be the change you made 2 years ago that caused the virus today.
Ah, Voo Doo, I know thee well. Many of my customers have claimed I have practiced the art.
vi +