Britain Helps Children Learn From Home By Procuring Them Laptops Preloaded With Russian Malware

from the whoops dept

As the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world, one of the main points of contention has been how to handle schools. Some countries sent all students home to keep them from spreading the virus. Other countries made schools the last thing they shut down, if they ever did, arguing that schools haven't been a major source of transmission and teaching kids is too important to shut down. Here in America, most states did a hybrid model, choosing the absolute worst of both worlds. Teachers get hamstrung having to teach students both locally and remotely, which is basically impossible, while still having students and teachers come into schools to transmit the virus to one another.

Along the way, lots of schools took lots of actions meant to help students learn remotely, most of which were also quite dumb. Incorporating biometrics and AI to assist with remote testing sounds like a good idea, except these always go sideways. Privacy issues are discovered and kids learn how to game the AI-driven tests. Still other districts forced teachers to come into the school solely to teach kids who were at home and then told teachers to take their masks off if they were causing audio problems.

But to see the cake-taking, best combination for good intentions gone horribly wrong, you really have to hand it to the UK ordering a ton of laptops for remote learning... that also came pre-loaded with Russian malware.

The affected laptops, supplied to schools under the government's Get Help With Technology (GHWT) scheme, which started last year, came bundled with the Gamarue malware – an old remote access worm from the 2010s.

The Register understands that a batch of 23,000 computers, the GeoBook 1E running Windows 10, made by Shenzhen-headquartered Tactus Group, contained the units that were loaded with malware. A spokesperson for the manufacturer was not available for comment.

This is almost certainly an instance of someone prepping these machines using an image that somehow was infected with the malware... but still. Not having any checks prior to the machines getting out to school districts for this sort of thing and nearly rolling the machines out to students sure feels like incompetence. Also likely factoring into all of this is the extreme lack of supply for laptops from the more traditional manufacturers, leading some schools to go find off-brand alternatives. The GeoBook is one of those.

But again, still, Gamarue calls home somewhere inside of Russia and allows nefarious actors to remotely access these machines. Machines that almost certainly have webcams on them. That's... not good?

If the pandemic has exposed anything at all about humanity, it surely must be how wildly unprepared we were for it.

Filed Under: covid-19, laptops, malware, pandemic, school children, uk