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According to an article published by the Miami Herald, a group of Moroccan hackers called MoRo, managed to access computer systems of four schools in Florida ahead of the presidential elections. The hackers are believed to be looking for valuable data that would lead them to voting systems in the US.
The group, after several attempts, stole the personal data of hundreds of students including their names, date of birth, social security numbers and addresses. «They infected the systems with malware -malicious software- that turned off the logs recording who accessed the systems», according to the United Data Technologies (UDT), an American cyber security company that investigated the incident.
The firm indicates that : «for three months, the hackers probed the systems, mapping them out and testing their defenses», adding that «at one point, they even posted photos of someone dressed as an ISIS fighter on two school district websites».
Hack attacks to enter US voting systems
According to the same source, the Moroccan-based group of hackers was not really after the students’ data, «they were for some way to slip into other sensitive government systems, including state voting systems». Fortunately, they never found what they were looking for but instead took advantage of sensitive information of a number of students and their parents.
Describing how the hacking went on, UDT states that the hackers started by sending an infected email message that contained a malware for months without being detected. In November they sent a picture of an ISIS fighter which enabled them «to turn off the logs recording who entered certain computer systems and what they did while logged on».
Based on the investigation conducted by the UDT, hackers were «trying to get into voting systems hosted by Diebold voting platforms. They wanted to bring down what they thought were state voting systems». Identified as MoRo, the hackers were not related to the Moroccan government.
