Ross McCarthy reports: A cheating student who hacked into the University of Birmingham’s computer system so he could get a better degree has been jailed for four months. Imran Uddin, 25, used a keyboard spying device to steal staff passwords and then upped five exam marks, including one from 57 per cent to 73 per cent. Read…
Category: Education Sector
WV: School system computer network attacked by botnet; Ohio County student allegedly involved
Jeff Jenkins reports: A Wheeling area high school student was recently able to invade the public education computer network and slow things down including standardized testing that was happening in some counties at the time. West Virginia Department of Education Chief Technology Officer Sterling Beane said it happened last week when the student used an…
IE: Photocopies of college students’ passports left in a skip on busy street
TheJournal.ie reports: Photocopies of sensitive information belonging to students were left in a skip bag outside a Dublin college. The bag was left outside the Dublin College for Advanced Studies (DCAS), a private college on Dublin’s Capel Street. Speaking to TheJournal.ie this evening, John Ryan, the director of studies at DCAS said that the files had been left…
NC: Wake County Public Schools take servers offline after DDoS attack
WRAL reports: Officials with the Wake County Public School System said Wednesday that they took dozens of school websites offline after a server was hit by hackers. The attack happened several weeks ago on a server that hosts 54 of the 178 websites operated by the school system. WCPSS spokeswoman Lisa Luten said the hack…
University of Utah responds to alert, investigating
Vulnerable Disclosures writes: Looks like they still are having issues. While they haven’t noted any breaches we are pretty sure from what we have been seeing on our systems and sensors that they have an issue. UPDATE: Within minutes of the report the University of Utah has begun the process to research this issue. Apparently this…
Okay, so now they’ll act on the state’s recommendations
I’ve occasionally posted school district audits conducted by the New York State Comptroller’s Office to highlight the state of infosecurity – or lack thereof – in the k-12 sector. Here’s a summary of, and link to, a newly released audit (emphasis added by me): Alfred-Almond Central School District Although a previous Office of the State Comptroller…