14 DAY TRIAL // In early June, news broke about two students at San Dimas High School who breached the computer system of the educational institution and changed the grades of fellow students in exchange for cash.
The incident may have a deeper impact than modifying the scores, for a sum believed to be up to $500 / €450, as the Bonita Unified School District reports that the hackers may have downloaded personal information about the students.
Social security numbers, emails and phones exposed
In a letter disclosing the issue to parents/guardians of minor students and adult students, Superintendent Gary J. Rapkin says that the two perpetrators could have retrieved names, social security numbers, birth dates, medical information, Aeries login data, physical addresses, emails and phone numbers.
The two that breached the San Dimas systems are both 18 years old, and it is alleged that they changed the grades of up to 10 students.
The method used to gain illegal access to the servers has not been disclosed, but security measures in the education sector are known to be much below the standard.
School district purchased identity protection services
Sharing from his experience, GhostShell, a hacker who leaked information from 548 web servers not long ago, said that the different software components used by educational institutions “are the most vulnerable amongst all the modules. (not that they're unique but it's almost like they gathered the weakest ones and decided to use only those).”
Superintendent Rapkin said that at the moment there are no reports about misuse of the stolen information.
However, to protect the information leaked by the two hackers, Bonita Unified School District provides a complimentary subscription for credit monitoring and identity theft service, for one year.
Additional action has been taken to make sure that such incidents are avoided in the future, such as reviewing and increasing security measures within the district.