Education

SHARONVILLE, Ohio — America’s fascination with more technology at your fingertips can lead to things many never expected.

“Unfortunately, all this technology that brings convenience and benefits to society can be used by malicious people to do this sort of thing,” said cybersecurity expert Dave Hatter.

Eight Ohio schools were knocked out on Friday, including Princeton High School. A 119 caller told Dispatch that a live shooter was inside the school and injured 10 students.

“They came to our classroom. It’s next to our classroom. He opened fire on the students. Ten students were injured next to our classroom,” said the 911 caller. told the dispatcher.

problem? Everything was a hoax.

“You’ll be shocked not only from a technical point of view, but at what they’re capable of as scumbags,” Hatter said. “Worst crap imaginable”

Hamilton County prosecutor Joe Dieters said in a statement that anyone involved in the hoax was “ready to go to jail.”

“The threat of a school shooting is every parent’s worst nightmare,” Ditters said. “I can’t imagine how scared these parents and children must have been today. To orchestrate a hoax like this is not offensive. It’s stupid and completely illegal. It’s easy for innocent people and first responders Law enforcement will try to find out who did this…and they better be prepared to go to jail when they’re caught.”

But Hatter believes the culprit was probably a call from abroad, given the number of swatting calls made on Friday.

“Unless these are people in the United States who could be identified and prosecuted…if there are no actual results, why not more?” Hatter said. “Especially when it is driven by enemies of the United States who only want to cause chaos, confusion and division within the United States. Why not more? Easy to do, hard to prevent. is.”

Hatter said the problem is how much society depends on technology.

“Society relies heavily on this digital technology, much of it was designed at a time when no one could have imagined how to use it in this way,” he said.

In Friday’s incident, the call appeared to come from inside Princeton High School.

Hatter says hackers who know what they’re doing can be nearly untraceable. He said hackers can “spoof” phone numbers and hack into a virtual private network (VPN) to make the number appear to originate from within the school.

Hatter said smartphones, tablets and smart TVs could be hacked by students bringing them to school or devices already in school.

“The more IOTs and smart devices that plug in, the more potential gaps there are in network and armor,” said Hatter. “This is also why this is so difficult. All of these devices bring incredible convenience.

“Does it have any kind of antivirus on it? Is it locked down from being hacked? Are you getting updates? just waving. please hack me

“What about the Metropolitan Police Department? Wait a minute and decide if this is an attempt at swatting. Of course it isn’t. That’s why this is a difficult problem to solve,” Hatter said.

This kind of swatting call may be difficult to stop in the future.

“…until the underlying technology is improved enough to know that a phone number isn’t a phone number, where it says it’s coming from is where it’s coming from No. Then we’ll throw in some deepfake stuff and I don’t know how we can stop that,” Hatter said.

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