ORANGE PARK, Fla. – Oakleaf High School's website is back up and running after it was hacked Sunday by a group who identified itself as the Zulu Squad FTW.
The group sent a message Sunday saying, "Zulu Squad checking in and you SQL skills still (expletive)."
The school's website was frozen, preventing users from clicking on anything. The hack lasted about 12 hours.
Around 6:30 a.m. Monday the website was disabled and around 7 a.m. the original website was back up.
News4Jax crime and safety analyst Gil Smith said the person or people responsible could face a third-degree felony charge if they are caught. That could mean probation, a fine or even worse.
"You always have the possibility of someone going to jail for a period of time,, and I'm sure they may not have thought of that when they did this," Smith said. "A lot more damage could have been done."
According to Clay County School District spokesman Gavin Rollins, the district is in the process of revamping its websites to not only help prevent things like this from happening, but to also better connect the school websites.
Rollins said that right now, each school has a separate website on its own server but said in a few months, the new websites will be rolled out and they will all be connected and on the same server.
"First, it will be less likely that this type of thing (the hack) will happen, but if it does happen, we would be able to immediately shut it down from the district level, so that will give us greater management, because we have 41 schools, of all the schools' websites," Rollins said.
Rollins said grades and student information weren't compromised. Students and parents were not able to access some of their homework and assignments through the portal, and teachers were expected to work with students to accept late work.
Authorities are investigating who is responsible for hacking the website. The Clay County Sheriff's Office said it's working with Oakleaf High's IT department, and investigators are on stand-by if they're needed to help in the school's investigation.
"It is a serious offense," Rollins said. "I know students think of these things as pranks sometimes, but they are serious offenses whether it's vandalism, whether it's websites. We have a track record of finding and bringing to justice students who do these types of things."
A Duval County Schools spokesperson said that the county is working with its technology partners to "secure its district and school websites through standard compliance, policies, monitoring, and the use of the latest vulnerability management tools."