Cybersecurity expert suspects hackers caused Morton High School District 201 website outage

For the last week, this is what students and staff have seen when trying to log onto the Morton High School District 201 website:

According to a statement from district superintendent Tim Truesdale, "District 201 is currently experiencing a computer network disruption that has impacted our ability to access certain systems," but Paul Keener — a cyber security expert — thinks hackers could be the source of the problem.

"There are a number of ways something like this could happen," Keener said. "They tend to be resolved fairly quickly because there's backups and you can restore from a known, good back up. It's when you don't trust the backup things start to get delayed — that tends to indicate more of a malware type of infection."

*The full statement from Truesdale can be read at the bottom of this .

Brothers Andy and Adam Carrasquedo are students at Morton East High School in the district, and said the service outage has been a major disruption.

"You can't really use your computers," Andy Carrasquedo said. "Even the teachers can't grade your work. It's messed up all of us."

"They started bringing out papers worksheets in order for us to keep working," Adam Carrasquedo said. "It's kind of hard, but we'll get used to it."

All curriculum and grading is done online under normal circumstances so, the pivot to paper textbooks has been a blast from the past in the interim.

"I hope it gets fixed soon so I can check my grades and get them the best they can be," Adam Carrasquedo said.

"District 201 is currently experiencing a computer network disruption that has impacted our ability to access certain systems. Upon discovery, we immediately secured the network and began working with our IT staff and third-party computer specialists to investigate the incident. Our team is diligently working to minimize service interruptions wherever possible. As our investigation and recovery efforts remain ongoing, we are unable to provide additional details at this time." – District 201 Superintendent Tim Truesdale