Page 11 - Winter 2025

Industry News

voice traffic to school phone systems whilst the Every machine on the campus was re-imaged to
PSTN lines tend to be used for emergency phone ensure that no trace of the attack remained. For four
lines in lifts and for connecting fire/intruder alarms, days the team evaluated data integrity and assessed
door intercoms, barrier gates and certain types of which servers were a priority for operation. Data
broadband lines such as FTTC and ADSL. was analysed specifically to determine the origin of
the attack, which was traced to a Remote Desktop
With the switch-off all schools that currently have
Protocol connection by a member of staff.
PSTN or ISDN lines connected to their phone systems
will have to replace or upgrade these systems. During the rebuild every system and machine was
In future robust internet connectivity will drive brought to absolute minimal operating capacity
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone systems with no internet capacity. Everything that had been
and interconnected devices utilising broadband corrupted was then analysed to establish where it
connections in place of ancient copper cabling. had been corrupted. FIRST UK ROBOTICS
As each server was reactivated it was scanned,
cleaned and taken offline again for a further check. COMPETITION FOR
This was done for eighteen virtual servers. The team
then visited the homes of staff members to inspect GIRLS
and clean their laptops and install new antivirus
software to protect remote devices. Remote Desktop
Protocol access was then ceased.
The detection of residuals was particularly difficult,
with knowing exactly what was corrupted “almost
impossible”. School Governors naturally wanted to
know what had occurred and why.
Once the system was operational again the IT
The UK’s first ever robotics competition for girls was Professor Yang Gao, Professor of Robotics and Head
team was keen to implement preventive measures.
launched at King’s College London in November. of King’s Centre for Robotics Research, states:
Additional firewalls were considered, but these were
not deemed to be adequate to completely prevent The Girls Robotics Challenge is aimed at girls from 12 “ The Girls Robotics Challenge is an inspiring
a further attack. Instead they investigated BullWall to 16 who will design, code and build robots in teams initiative that empowers young women to lead in
Ransomware Containment and they were glad that under the supervision of students at King’s College STEM, highlighting their creativity and technical
they did because it went on to thwart four further with a space exploration theme. potential. Being part of this journey alongside the
attacks. girls is incredible, as we witness their innovative
An inaugural workshop was held at King’s College
The Department for Education has published a set of ideas come to life with the dedicated support of
Sharn Somerton-Davies, IT Manager for Sir Roger consisting of lectures on cutting-edge robotics
digital technology standards that detail the minimum King’s staff and students, who mentor and inspire
Manwood’s School, explains: research. In the months ahead the teams will develop
standards that schools are now required to meet, the next generation, fostering a more inclusive
and build their designs using kits provided by King’s
including having a full-fibre broadband connection “ We’ve had instances of packets being attached future in technology”.
College. They are encouraged to use sustainable
with a failover backup line in place should the main to what looked like legitimate HMRC Government
materials and will be judged on their use of material The final ‘Challenge Day’ is scheduled for April.
line fail. emails going to the finance team, BullWall stopped
when building their robots. Each robot will navigate a
that attack. We also received a PowerPoint file from Reference: Miles, S., ‘Girls kickstart Journey into Robotics’, Electronic
Reference: Allum, P., Technology and Innovation, 2024/25, p.40-41 course using ultrasonic distance sensors, providing Specifier, 18th. December
a trusted source that was expected but again the
an incentive for participants to learn how to code
ransomware had been embedded and would’ve
autonomous decision-making so that their robot can
Cybersecurity Case Study: Sir Roger quickly and easily spread if BullWall hadn’t put an navigate the route.
Manwood’s School instant stop to it. Of the four attacks three have
been malicious and the fourth was a student who
With a team of two looking after over 600 computers didn’t have malicious intent, but had through their
onsite, 17 servers, multiple projectors, a telephone actions made us vulnerable. On all four occasions
system and CCTV, Sir Roger Manwood’s School found BullWall protected us”.
itself a prime target for ransomware attacks.
Article supplied courtesy of BullWall Visit our website!
One night at 3am during the first Covid-19 lockdown,
an attack came. Criminals had ‘piggy-backed’ on
a user with remote access, bypassing preventative Why not head down to our website and
security measures and encrypting all files on the
network. By the time IT staff arrived at the school the read more news in our blog section?
next morning users were unable to log in. There was
no email and the school only had its internal phone
system to rely on. Updated daily with hand-picked articles
from around the web...
The IT team proceeded to disconnect everything,
clean the machines and use available backups to
recover lost files, which was a slow process and took
around two weeks to complete.
institutionofelectronics.ac.uk

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