Craig Williams - Cisco Talos Director joins Yahoo Finance’s On The Move panel to discuss why academic fraud is escalating as more schools turn to remote learning.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: Joining us now is Craig Williams, Cisco Talos director, as a part of our Road to Recovery segment focused on education, brought to you by TIAA. Our education reporter Reggie Wade is also with us. And the general topic of this discussion with so many millions of children, you know, getting their lessons from home, there's a whole issue about cyber security.

So Chris-- Craig, let me start with this question. What form does the threat take? Are we talking about people outside? Or are we talking about kids who might be using this cyber world to create their own kinds of mischief?

CRAIG WILLIAMS: Well, a little bit of both. You know, what we're currently seeing is basically academic fraud on the increase. You know, this is something at Cisco Talos that we've been monitoring for, you know, a couple of years now. And we saw a 400% increase since 2019. And then on top of that, 4%-- or sorry, a 4% increase since August.

So basically, we're seeing more of it. We're seeing students go to these questionable sites to try and get these reports written by someone else. And the real problem with that is they don't really know what kind of sites these are. Sometimes they get fraudulent reports, and sometimes they get malware.

REGGIE WADE: Craig, Reggie Wade here. As a former teacher, I always wondered if students were cheating. I remember I started, they had cell phones first coming out. Do you see that parents also feel that their children are getting the short end of the stick because so many other kids may be using these different sites to cheat and kind of shortchanging their own children?

CRAIG WILLIAMS: Well, I think one of the main concerns for parents is really the increased security risk. I mean, when you have these documents coming down from these sites that are just selling them as pre-written reports, enabling cheating, it's unfair to the other kids.

And you're also taking these documents onto your network that are using some of the same techniques that we all rely on for pretty graphics and interesting visual aids. But they're also using that to enable attackers to control the machine. And so what that can do is allow a threat into your home, which can then use your network for malicious activity.

JULIE HYMAN: So how do you stop all of this, I guess is the question, Craig. Because is it just a matter of awareness of kids not, you know-- I mean, I would also ask, like, cheaters going to cheat, right? So, like, even if you have more access to cheating, the people who are-- I don't understand why there would be a higher proportion of people who are trying to cheat than there used to be, if that makes any sense.

CRAIG WILLIAMS: That absolutely makes sense. I think part of the reason that we're seeing cheating increase is that accessibility is becoming easier. A lot of these questionable apps are being sold in app stores. And they're advertising themselves as legitimate methods to have essays written, for example.

Now the issue happens when students go to these sites and instead of getting an essay, they get redirected to another site with malware. Or maybe they do get an essay, but it's actually written very poorly, and they've ended up wasting money and time that they could have been using to further their education.

DAN HOWLEY: I just want to ask, you know, about the types of threats we're seeing. Is it because they're just downloading, you know, whatever they may think will help them cheat, the students? Is it something more?

And what does that mean then if they're connecting to an outside network like, for instance, their school, if they're using video chat services with them. Does that then open up the school to the threat of some kind of breach via the students?

CRAIG WILLIAMS: So that's a really interesting question. You know, what we're seeing a lot of the time are malicious documents being used. And I know that sounds, you know, relatively benign, right? But the reality is you can embed sophisticated malware inside of a document. And it's actually one of the things we see commonly used in nation state threats.

So when it comes down to the ability of an attacker to embed malware inside of one of these documents, the sky's the limit on what they can do. And so this absolutely can put schools at risk. You know, one of the things that we urge to help combat these threats are hardened devices, right? Devices that have limited the ability of the attackers to compromise the machine. So things like iPads and Chromebooks are great choices for parents.

REGGIE WADE: Craig, we've seen in Fort Worth that the school district is paying $337,000 for cybersecurity services after attack. And in Miami, a 16-year-old student hacked into their system and caused it to close for a few days. Do you think that districts around the country can bear the brunt of this added expense for cybersecurity?

CRAIG WILLIAMS: Well, I think cybersecurity is one of those things that's best applied in layers, right? There's not a single solution. That's going to solve all the problems for most businesses.

Now, luckily, there are a lot of cheaper options out there. Cisco, for example, provides open DNS, which has a free option for you to use DNS servers, which will automatically filter out calls to malicious sites, which can really help in defending against academic threats.

MELODY HAHM: when you think about the kinds of demographics we're talking about right now, I would have to say students are pretty savvy, right? They grew up with the internet. They understand what phishing scams are. They probably are a lot more cynical and skeptical about a lot of these processes in place.

How do you educate the educators? How do you talk to principals, teachers, perhaps who are not as savvy, right? I think the learning curve for many of them was perhaps steeper than for students.

CRAIG WILLIAMS: Well, and I think to complicate the factor, a lot of these teachers didn't have the proper training when this remote learning went into place. And so as a result you've really got to try and explain to people the consequences of these actions.

And I think a great way to do it is to look at what you're allowing onto your system, right? When you put a Word document onto your system or another type of enriched file like that, you're potentially allowing attackers to compromise that machine. And this is especially true for systems that aren't patched regularly and maintained regularly, which unfortunately is often the case in some school systems.

So I think one of the things that I would urge the educators to do is to look for security solutions that don't require interactions from the students. That's why things like network security devices or security through something like DNS, which is the system that tells your computer where to go when you type in, like, Yahoo.com, for example. And so by applying security at these layers, which are transparent to the users, we can secure them with minimal overhead.