14 DAY TRIAL // Over the past two weeks, a student of Monroe High School in Michigan caused multiple, short-lived disruptions of the Internet connection used by the school district.
The student, a senior at the educational institution, would deploy a denial-of-service attack that disrupted the Internet connection for 10 to 15 minutes at a time.
This long a downtime may not appear to have a significant impact, but the incident repeated about six times in the past two weeks. Considering that classes rely on the Internet, staying connected at all times is vital to education in Monroe County.
A denial-of-service (DoS) attack consists in sending digital packets to the targeted server until the network or the machine’s resources become exhausted and data processing can no longer continue.
“We are so reliant on the Internet that we can’t afford to have downtime,” Monroe News publication learned from Dr. Stephen McNew, superintendent of the Monroe County Intermediate School District.
At the moment, the investigation determined that the senior student caused the disruptions, but the police is trying to find out if he had a partner in “crime.”
A DoS attack on the school district may be considered a good prank by some, or the new way to avoid classes, but in this case, the student may face criminal felony charges.