Officials with Brunswick County Schools and the Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office are investigating distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on the school’s network.

According to officials, the attacks have been occurring since county schools reopened in January and have been increasing in frequency that past several weeks.

A DDoS attack is usually an outside attack that uses multiple computers or devices to flood a targeted network with so much traffic that it overloads and crashes the system or cripples the ability of legit users from accessing it.

School officials say staff members are becoming extremely frustrated at the internet connectivity issues associated with the attacks.

The Brunswick County School’s technology department has been working to try and mitigate the impact on the school’s network. Officials say that the county’s network infrastructure is being specifically targeted in the attacks, but the systems have not been compromised.

A preliminary investigation has revealed that the individual(s) initiating the attacks have at some point been an authenticated user signed into the school’s network. School officials says this leads them to believe that the responsible party is a current or former student or staff member.

Authorities are still investigating.

Source: http://www.wect.com/story/28614292/ddos-network-attacks-frustrate-brunswick-county-school-officials