Troy School District website down after hacking from outside U.S., leaders say
Mar. 16—The Troy School District's website is down after hackers posted discriminatory messages Monday, officials said.
The hack was discovered in the afternoon, the district said on its Facebook page.
"Hate speech and graffiti was posted on all of our district websites and the system's internal messenger was used to send emails to staff and some families," Kerry Birmingham, a district spokeswoman, told The Detroit News. "The language and images used were despicable, and we strongly denounce them."
The incident also struck the International Academy in Troy, which said hackers "posted harmful and hurtful messages" on its website.
Birmingham said preliminary information shows the hack "generated from outside the country using a known malicious IP address and that no student information or sensitive data was compromised by the breach."
The district is working with the Michigan State Cyber Response Team to investigate, Birmingham said.
"Hate has no place in the Troy School District; acts like this will not be tolerated," she said. "... All of our websites have been taken down temporarily to reset webmaster passwords and to ensure that the hackers didn't create any points for future access. We are also tightening security measures on our vendor hosted websites and working with their teams to ensure that this does not happen again."
