silkyzephyr writes: The Jefferson-Madison Regional Library has been forced to suspend its Wifi service. According to one of the reference librarians, a hacker used it to break in and vandalize their computer. The library hopes Charlottesville’s information technology office can devise safeguards. That office is currently overburdened with the changeover to the new Citylink software, however. So it seems unlikely the library can restore Wifi service any time soon.
Bummer. Hopefully, they’ll plug in a $50 hardware firewall to partition off their public network from their private network to prevent that from happening again via WiFi or the computer lab. 02/11 Update: It seems that something got lost in the game of telephone. It was system trouble, but non-malicious, that disconnected the WiFi. They decided to leave it down, as it is just a pilot project, until they could fix the system problem permanent-like to bring the connectivity back. Thanks to library prez John Halliday for the info. Mea culpa.
Hey Waldo–why not propose a consulting contract to the library? For say $250, you’ll build a brick wall around their computer so it is as vandal-proof as a Windoze system can be. Or you’ll switch them over to Macintosh so they are really and genuinely safe.
i bet they closed it down because they couldn’t figure out how to maintain it.
If they’re too stupid to secure their network, how were they smart enough to trace the source of the attack?
I wonder what local laws are on the books to charge someone in the remote event a "vandalizing hacker" is identified?
And then do we have "experts" in the PD to handle incidents such as this? I would guess not but perhaps on a consultant basis.
Folks –
Ah, the Internet – spreading the wrong news at the speed of light.
The Library’s wi-fi problems at the Central Branch were caused by a misconfiguration of a server (by a employee, an honest mistake) and had NOTHING to do with hacking, vandalism or the Citylink system. They took it off-line so they could fix it properly.
Wi-fi at Gordon Avenue is still operational.
I still want to blame the teenage hackers. They are the reason why I got AOL anti virus.
Journalism usualy follows the same rule as for command and control of nucelar weapons: two people have to agree before you can launch. Here I relied on what one reference librarian said. I should have checked that before publishing. Thanks to Waldo for doing my homework for me.
Also there needs to be a third person standing behind me with a baseball bat for when I post an item without spell checking.