Laptops provided to schools from the Government arrived with a virus on them that connected to servers in Russia.

The discovery raises concerns that hackers could steal data on vulnerable students learning from home amid the pandemic.

Employees of a Bradford school sounded the alarm in an online forum after receiving laptops containing malware installed by hackers, according to The Telegraph.

The Department for Education (DfE) confirmed the incident to the newspaper and said it was ‘an issue with a small number of devices’.

‘We are investigating as an urgent priority to resolve the matter as soon as possible,’ a spokesman said.

‘DfE IT teams are in touch with those who have reported this issue. We believe this is not widespread.’

Schools now face days of extra work deleting software on laptops to make sure they’re safe before sending them out to students, a source claimed.

They added that around 10% of the laptops they had received had been found to contain the virus.

It is feared some laptops with the virus may have been provided to students without proper checks.

According to The Telegraph, Bradford Council contacted schools on Wednesday to warn them of the problem, writing that ‘the network worm looks like it contacts Russian servers when active’.

A council employee said the problem should be treated as ‘a matter of urgency’ and urged schools to check their networks for any evidence that they had been hacked.

An IT employee in Wolverhampton also raised the issue in an online forum, as well as an employee from a Lincolnshire school.

 Earlier this month the Government announced it would be providing a further 300,000 laptops and tablets to help disadvantaged children and young people learn at home, pushing the total number that it has given out to 1.3 million.

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