BCSD victim of Web site hacker

BONNERS FERRY - A hacker is believed to have taken over the Boundary County School District's Web page on March 18.

The hacker, who apparently identified himself as the devil, replaced information about the district and included things like “asking for peace in the world” and “no war,” said superintendent Dr. Don Bartling.

The site defacement, however, was not considered a deliberate attack on the school district, Bartling said.

“I apologized for the panic and fear it caused to the people who read it,” Bartling said. “We plan to change servers and make sure we have more security.”

The Web site for the district is warehoused with the Web hosting company CWIhosting of El Paso, Texas. It is stored on a server that also stores Web sites for numerous companies, organizations and people throughout the world.

They too were affected by the same defacement due to an oversight on security procedures.

The problem was detected ,and the Web site was shut down. Teacher Ed Katz and technology coordinator Rob Kent worked on the Web site. It was back to normal the following day.

Kent said he believes the hacker was not a local person.

“Our Web hosting is done by an outside company we contract with in Texas,” he said. “That's where the site itself is located.”

“Basically what happened is the server we used with the company is shared with many other companies,” he continued. “I highly doubt it was directed to us.”