Stevens continues to survive off of the temporary ‘Skyline’ Wi-Fi network established by the Division of Information Technology. This network was created in the wake of the summer ransomware attack that left campus nonoperational for an extended duration. Up until this past Monday, September 9, several categories of websites were blocked with no immediate explanation presented to students.
The blocked categories include ‘porn,’ such as sites like pornhub.com, ‘questionable,’ including sites such as 4chan.org, ‘abused-drugs,’ including sites such as leafly.com, ‘extremism,’ including BestGore.com, and others.
Both the full extent of blocked sites and complete list of banned categories are unknown at this time.
On the previous ‘Stevens Wi-Fi’ network, students were given freedom to explore the deepest, darkest realms the internet has to offer. It is currently a mystery as to why the bans in question were enacted, despite having never existed previously. The Division of Information Technology did not respond to The Stute’s request for comment or specific questions about the banned websites. Some of the banned sites, such as Leafly, are not known to be exceptional vectors for malware, so the ban does not appear to be correlate to the recent ransomware attack.
Several students have responded negatively to the blocks, expressing numerous concerns. One student described that there would be direct negative impact on academic research, as their research on cannabis for a class became more challenging without community resources such as Leafly.
When The Stute reached out to her for comment, Stevens’ Director of Public Relations Thania Benios responded via email, saying, “there are no longer blocked websites, except for three remaining categories of blocks that are all known malicious.” Though Thania did not identify these categories, and there were no website banned previously, it is understood that they were blocked to help prevent future malware infections invading the network.
At the moment, ‘Skyline’ is the campus Wi-Fi network, while certain administrators and staff are on the permanent and more restrictive ‘Phoenix’ network. How restrictive the finalized network for students will be remains in the air. However, Thania was “able to confirm with David Dodd that blocked websites were a temporary measure only in order to get secured operations up and running,” indicating that the blocks will continue to be lifted going forward.
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