Socorro ISD spends thousands after student downloads malicious program to Eastlake High computers

The Socorro Independent School District spent $8,000 this weekend, cleaning up a number of Eastlake High computers. A student downloaded malware, or a malicious program to the school’s computer system.

“At 4:45 we disabled the campus from our network as we started looking into the situation,” said Hector Reyna, SISD director of technology services.

Reyna said the senior downloaded the malware and his fellow students knew. They got nervous and told the teacher, who took the student to the principal’s office. Immediately the SISD IT department started checking computers, shutting down all technology instruction the following day.

“It’s out there, it’s out there everywhere,” Reyna said. “Kids can go to any websites and copy those templates. And that’s what they did. They copied the templates and tried to run it there at the school.”

After spending the weekend checking 1,000 computers, they found out he had only infected 16. Reyna said he was attempting to copy log-ins and passwords, with the intent of identify theft. The student was arrested and charged with breach of computer systems

“You know technology plays a role in everything that we do,” Reyna said. “It has a lot of great points but one of the downfalls is that at any time someone can cause a disruption.”

The only thing the district has left to check are about 200 laptops.