Linda A. Moore reports: A former Rhodes College student pleaded guilty Tuesday to hacking into the college’s computer system to change his grades and keep his scholarship. Michael Geddati, 20, was a freshman pre-med major when between December 2017 and May 2018, he accessed various systems without authorization to raise his grades. Geddati’s actions were detected after a faculty…
Category: Education Sector
NH: Manchester school officials confirm data breach, saying student scores were sent to all Hallsville Elementary families
Kevin Landrigan reports: Manchester school administrators confirmed Friday that a data breach occurred when individual student scores on tests were inadvertently sent to all families of Hallsville Elementary School students. The individual score sheets were attached to an email sent out on the results of the latest iReady data on reading and math tests which…
42,000 SLCC students’ tax documents were lost when unencrypted drive fell out of mailed envelope
Someone asked me today about the lack of W-2 phishing reports or W-2 incidents that we’ve seen so far this year. I responded that I hadn’t really had time to research W-2 attacks yet, but a reader, “DLOW,” has now kindly submitted a news story by Mary Richards of KSL in Utah. The kinds of…
Changing numeric ID in url allowed students to view other Stanford students’ admission files, sensitive personal data
Julia Ingram and Hannah Knowles report: Before this week, Stanford students could view the Common Applications and high school transcripts of other students if they first requested to view their own admission documents under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Accessible documents contained sensitive personal information including, for some students, Social Security numbers….
IL: School District computer system; most data recovered, superintendent says
Kennedy Nolen reports: Foreign hackers targeted the Mount Zion schools computer system in an attack that resulted in 19 days’ worth of grades being wiped out across the district. Data was not removed from the system, but the hackers encrypted several servers, making them unusable, Superintendent Travis Roundcount said in an emailed response to questions from the…
‘Hackers’ Charged by U.S. Over Hundreds of Hoax Bomb Threats on Schools
Dell Cameron reports: An alleged hacker accused of sending fake bomb threats to hundreds of schools was reportedly arrested Tuesday by FBI agents in North Carolina, while an alleged accomplice, who is currently incarcerated in the U.K., now faces charges in the U.S. Timothy Dalton Vaughn, 20, is facing an 11-count federal indictment, including charges…