Brooklyn Tech Email Prank: A Network Security Lesson for Schools

Photograph by Emile Eagan.

“This was a benign attack, but could have been much worse,” says Kevin Jarrett, technology facilitator for K–4 students at Northfield (NJ) Community School. “If any schools watching are smart, they will have procedures in place to eliminate this in the future.”

BTHS student government members received an email Sunday, January 3, saying a construction accident would cause the school to be closed the next day. From there, the message spread rapidly across social networks. But there had been no accident, and the email, while appearing to come from an official school address, was a gag, which the student newspaper subsequently reported.

“This looked believable, but could not be corroborated from an official source,” says Jarrett. That’s critical, and goes to the cornerstone of any lesson on Internet safety—make sure to know where information is coming from. Administrators, too, need to learn how easy it is to stage these pranks, he says. BTHS students took to their own message boards and explained, in detailed steps, how easily someone can send a fake email. To Jarrett and others, schools and staff need to begin by beefing up digital citizenship education for students and teachers, and then ensure that when official communication goes out, those messages are duplicated on a second source such as the school’s Web site, which is less susceptible to hacking.