District 63 Computer Network Attacked By Malware

East Maine School District 63 sent the following letter, from Superintendent Dr. Scott Clay, to parents Thursday:

 
Recently, the District computer network was attacked by malware that resulted in a shutdown of network traffic. The cleanup began immediately by a team of experts from TechCare/All Covered, our IT support service, along with our technology department and information from Trend-Micro, the vendor that provides our anti-virus software. As of Tuesday, September 6, 2011, only two infected systems out of a total of approximately 1500 computers were discovered to be infected and both were immediately cleaned and removed.
 
A preliminary report issued on September 7, 2011, from TechCare/All Covered indicates that our network appears to be very healthy, with no unusual traffic. Additional configurations were made to harden the servers against network discovery and attack and all desktops/laptops on the network were cleaned.
 
There are no indications that the malware attempted to access or copy any data that resides on the East Maine School District infrastructure. Preliminary forensic examination of the servers did not reveal any unknown secondary applications on the servers, or the presence of software used to upload data to the Internet. There are no indications that the malware attempted to alter any data that resides on the network, or attempted to alter the operating system to mask an attempt at modification.
 
TechCare/All Covered is compiling recommendations to strengthen the internal security at East Maine School District 63 and to prevent a similar malware incident in the future. Recommendations will follow to further harden the servers and implement a plan for upgrading security patches on workstations and laptops.