Important Information
Mac Spoofing
Yesterday, November 7th, we experienced two brief network outages with each lasting approximately a minute. After investigating it was determined these outages were the result of a MAC spoofing attempt by someone on our guest network and someone on the PLTW network.
MAC spoofing is an attempt to change your MAC address (identifies your device) to either hide from network monitoring or so you can pretend to be an access point and collect information from those who connect to your device. Our Wireless gateway stopped the device and quickly restarted as a defense against the potential threat. Based upon the specific MAC addresses generated by the spoofing software used, it appears they tried to replicate our Ruckus Wireless Access Points.
This WILL NOT BE TOLERATED. Any information regarding the student or students who attempted this should be reported to me. This is a severe violation of the AUP as the student is attempting to change, hack, steal information, or circumvent our network, and the student could face expulsion and criminal charges.
The guest network was shutdown yesterday and remained down part of November 8th. When I reopened the network, several more MAC spoofing attempts were made forcing me to delete the hastguest network.
As a result of this threat, I have implemented a registration process for using the hastguest2 network. Staff and students connecting to the network will be brought to a page asking them to register their device. If you click on guest access/register new device, you will be required to enter your real name, email address, and phone number.
Students who enter false information or non-HAST email addresses will have their passes deleted.
Insurance Reminder
This is a reminder to all staff and students. Insurance premiums are $70 for the school year. When a student purchases the insurance, he or she saves his or herself from having to purchase a brand new iPad in the event of a broken device. Instead, the student will pay a $50 deductible payment for the device.
I will not provide a student with a replacement device until payment is made. Once payment is made, student should receive an iPad within 24 hours (usually the same day as payment).
Payment should be made to Mr. Dennis Small, Business Manager.
Support ticket breakdown –
Total August – 280 support tickets
Total September – 63 support tickets
Total October – 66 support tickets
October was another big month for support tickets. We finished with 66, which is 3 more than September.
The highest areas of support included PowerSchool resets, iPad Display/Hardware issues, and Laptop issues.
We continue to see issues with iPad hardware or displays. Many of these issues have been resolved by simply pressing the power button or doing a hard reboot. Some have of these tickets have been the result of the displays going out.
The PowerSchool resets have gone down from 165 in August, 19 in September, to 13 in October. If you have an issue logging in to PowerSchool, your teachers have the passwords on a google sheet Mr. Dupras shared with staff. If that doesn’t work, then you should fill out a support ticket so he can reset the password.
Insurance Claims
Insurance claims have remained steady each month. We had 7 in August, 5 in September, and 6 in October. All claims have been the result of cracked screens. The most breaks are in 8th grade, followed by 9th grade. I suspect the reason for the abundance of broken iPads in 8th grade is due to the lack of locker room for 8th grade.
Lost iPads
Last year we recovered EVERY iPad reported lost. This is something I am very proud of as teachers and staff follow procedures to locate these devices. This year through the first three months, we have recovered all iPads reported lost. Above is the breakdown of lost devices. In August we had 3 devices lost, September had 10 devices lost and October had 7 devices reported lost. Great work to all who helped recover these devices. When we follow procedures, we find the devices.
As a reminder to all students: report to teacher immediately and then retrace your steps.
Other Tech Notes:
- Updated Casper Server (Mobile Device Manager & backup DNS server)
- Updated Open Directory Server (Open Directory, DNS, DHCP server)
- Updated and repurposed two old servers.These two old servers now serve as caching servers. This allows for different updates, app or file downloads to be stored directly on the server. When a student goes to download the app, it should download much faster since it is stored locally. We now have 7 servers in operation.
- Updated our JSS Test server (Mobile Device Manager backup and configuration share)
- Once again I will remind students in 6th and 7th grade NOT to update their iPads to iOS 10. Pearson has informed us they have no yet found a solution for their test security issues with regards to iOS 10 and therefore, will not allow students with iOS 10 to test on those devices. For your sake and for mine, please do not update!