EDITORIAL
The only word that makes any sense in describing what happened to the Rock-dale ISD, and some other school districts, businesses and institutions this year, is the one used by Supt. Dr. Denise Monzingo to characterize the incident.
Scary.
A scammer somewhere on some continent managed to fake an email impersonating the superintendent and asked the district to send him or her the RISD’s W-2 forms for 2017. And got them.
That, of course, created problems for up to 350 employees and former employees, ranging from fears someone would file false income tax returns—some of that’s already happened—to wondering what an obvious criminal will do with all those Social Security numbers.
It’s called cyber crime and until it affects us, or our neighbors, we probably don’t think much about it.
This was a particularly troubling subset of cyber crime called “spearphishing.”
The general term “phishing” refers to a criminal trolling the web with a broad net, hoping to catch someone or something in it, pretty much taking whatever information they can get.
Spearphishing is much more sophisticated, pinpointing a specific target and seeking specific information.
In this case, someone not only knew who would have access to the information they wanted to steal (the W-2s), they were devilishly clever enough to prepare a document which very convincingly mimicked one from the superintendent, even including her photo.
What are we supposed to learn from this, aside from what we already knew, that it doesn’t take many dishonest people to make millions of honest ones despair for the general state of humanity?
Is there any way we can defend ourselves? RISD employees are undergoing extensive training to protect themselves against cyber crime. Many businesses and institutions are doing the same.
Sadly it’s sort of a version of an arms race. As the offense gets more sophisticated, it’s up to the defense to counter. Then, of course, the bad guys get even more sophisticated and it’s up to the good guys to....
And on and on.
The main weapon the good guys have is to develop more of a trait most of us don’t think of in a positive way. That would be skepticism.
It’s sort of a sad way to live, not believing anything or anyone until you have more information—much more—but when you get an email saying your grandson is in jail, and needs bail money, you better make a few phone calls to fi nd out if that’s the case.
That has happened by the way.
Here’s the really scary part. Our skepticism can’t extend to our technology itself. Not using it simply isn’t an option in 2018.
And we can’t just sit back and hope the spearphishers half a world away won’t fi nd us. We found out the answer to that, in Rockdale, this year.—M.B.
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