TUSD Website Hacked, Send Message “I Love ISIS”

Page from Schooldesk proposal for TUSD website

On Saturday, November 4, the Tucson Unified School District website was “hacked” shortly before 10: p.m., by a group of hackers associated with  ISIS. According to authorities, the  hackers, Team DZ Systems, a known ISIS supporting “hacking” group.

Hackers left behind a picture of Saddam Hussein with various messages written in Arabic, and a message written in English stating “I Love ISIS.”

In an internal email, the District’s Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo advised: *Our ITS team along with technicians from Hi-Tech, working with the webmaster in Florida, were able to take the site down at around 11PM. *Our website was down from around 11PM on Saturday 11/4 through the early hours of Sunday morning as the necessary patches to the system were performed by our ITS team and our project manager from Hi-Tech. *The website is currently up and running and has been since early Sunday morning. *Due to the nature of the “hack”, we may be assigned a representative from the US Department of Homeland security to investigate this incident more thoroughly.

Last year, in what was seen as an unnecessary expenditure, the District granted a lucrative contract for a website rebuild. It was believed that the rebuild would allow the District’s administration to hide legal documents that had once occupied the front page, as per court order. The rebuild worked, and links to the desegregation documents are now virtually impossible to find.

Dr. Mark Stegeman, a professor of Economics at the University of Arizona, vigorously objected to the rebuild, ordered by Chief Technology Officer, Scott Morrison and Superintendent H.T. Sanchez. Over his objections, in May 2017, the District entered into a $64,500 a year contract with SchoolDesk for the website.

Both Morrison and Sanchez have since left the District.

SchoolDesk, an Atlanta-based company, issued a statement in which they advised customers that technicians discovered a small file that was injected into the root of one of its websites. The hack affected approximately 800 school and district webpages.