By: Eric de Guzman
The emails of two admins were used in a spoofing on Feb. 13 and Feb. 14, 2018, MUSD Network Systems Administrator Sean LaRussa said in an email. Juniors at MHS were the recipients of these emails, LaRussa added.
As the emails indicated that the sender was from outside the U.S., the technology department was unable to locate the user, La Russa said. However, the department stopped the spoofing after the second email, which had more specific information than the previous email, LaRussa said.
“There are a variety of methods that could have been used from an infected computer to spoofing utilities,” LaRussa said. “This may have been someone playing around with spoof emails.”
MHS Principal Francis Rojas said two emails came from Ms. Butcher and one email came from Mr. Carter. Two of the emails had to do with Trojan Olympics, Rojas said.
“So there are these false emails that Ms. Butcher’s account sent, [saying],‘Your advisors are quitting’,” Rojas said. “Then someone took Mr. Carter’s email, said, ‘I quit because I’m tired of this, this or that’.”
The spoofing caused confusion amongst the students, Rojas said. The emails were sent to the student groups, such as the juniors, Rojas added.
One such spoofed email from Ms. Butcher, addressing the juniors of MHS, said, “Look alive.”
Initially, Class of 2019 Commissioner Fabian Aquino said, he was not sure what Butcher was talking about when this first email was sent out.
“I thought, might as well have just been directed towards me because I didn’t know she sent it out to everyone,” Aquino said. “When I read the message I thought it was just like a typo.”
The spoofer may have been a senior or a junior, Aquino added. That could explain why the juniors got the emails, Aquino said.
“At first, I was really confused,” Trojan Olympics Junior Alternate Eugene Laya said. “Once I saw a couple emails come after, I realized it wasn’t really that serious.”
Laya said that he did not think the emails regarding the cancellation of Trojan Olympics were real, as other classes said that Trojan Olympics was not cancelled for them.
“Could be a junior, could be anyone from this school,” Laya said. “I mean, they have to be really good with computers to do all this stuff, you know.”
According to LaRussa, this may not be the case. To spoof emails, one does not need to be technologically experienced, LaRussa said.
The spoofer seemed to be using an anonymous email app, Rojas said. Rojas added that he was familiar with the app, as similar incidents caused problems at his last high school.
“[A student] was accused of being a terrorist, and someone went into his email and said that he was bringing something to the campus, so we had to go on a lockdown,” Rojas said. “And then there were other emails that hacked the student information system, they hacked the Aeries, they posted all of the teacher passwords. They emailed us our passwords.”
One time at his last school, Rojas said, police located the IP address and username of one such offender. The student was arrested, charged with a felony, and put in jail, Rojas said.
“You better know that people go to jail for this,” Rojas said. “I think anything like that is malicious. You’re saying you’re someone else, there’s nothing neutral about that,” Rojas added.
“I mean, prank or no prank, that hurts people.”
