WYOMING, Mich. — Wyoming police continue to investigate after a stranger gained access to an online high school class and held a gun to their head.
Police have identified a possible suspect in this disturbing stunt that disrupted a Godfrey Lee 10th grade class Wednesday.
The person gained access to the virtual zoom classroom and with a creepy disguise showed a handgun and put it to his head, the teacher then quickly moved to kick the person out.
Police say the suspect’s IP address indicated they were from out of state and they are now conducting a full criminal investigation.
“It's unauthorized access of technology resources and those are felonies,” Cybersecurity Expert Randy Watkins said.
Watkins the CTO of Critical Start says it could have been a prank known as “Zoom-bombing,” intended to get a rise out of people, but says the action this stranger took is a cybercrime.
“Attackers take advantage of crisis, right they take advantage of changing times and we see this usually around tax season or any holidays,” Watkins said.
Now hackers are taking advantage of online learning as it becomes more prevalent.
“Those pranks leverage a vulnerability that is user configurable in the system. Zoom has actually corrected us to allow for this type of attack but really schools can change the settings of those meetings and restrict who has access to it.” Watkins said.
“They can implement things like waiting room where essentially you sit in a virtual waiting room until somebody allows you access and the teacher can grant access one at a time. And for those types of attacks that's probably the best layer of defense.” Watkins added.
The school district says they have already implemented measures to prevent something like this from happening again.
Meanwhile police say while there was no physical harm to students, they say they are taking this extremely seriously and will turn their full investigation over to the prosecutor’s office for charges.
