Minnesota testing was briefly halted when Pearson servers became overloaded–were they not expecting so many students?–and a “denial-of-service” hacker broke into the system.
“An overloaded processor and a “malicious denial-of-service attack” led to the shutdown Tuesday of Minnesota’s statewide student testing system, the state’s testing contractor said Wednesday.
“Pearson, the testing company, apologized for the problems and said the system had been repaired. By late morning, though, Minnesota Department of Education officials were not yet ready to give the all-clear.
“We still need to hear from Pearson exactly what the issue is, how they have resolved it, and receive an assurance that testing can resume smoothly,” department spokesman Josh Collins said.”
In an age when hackers can break into the computer systems of major corporations, can Pearson expect to remain immune?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And pray tell, what happens to all of the student information that is availble to the hackers?
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It is save in a small building in Shanghai.
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They were “hacked.” Uh, huh. Nice try, Pearson.
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“Hacked” (together) by their own software engineers!
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From the only independent education news outlet in the Twin City area: Bright Lights, Small City, by Sarah Lahm.
http://www.brightlightsmallcity.com/no-glitch-grit-minnesota-suspends-pearson-tests/
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Florida also tried to blame their computerized testing on an anonymous cyber-attack. A very convenient excuse that takes the burden of blame off of the testing companies. The masters of accountability would prefer not to be held accountable for failures in their own tests. In this blog post, I try to imagine what could possibly motivate hackers to attack state standardized testing.
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“A very convenient excuse that takes the burden of blame off of the testing companies.”
Horse manure, those education bureaufarts probably have no clue how to write a proper self protecting bid proposal, hell they probably let the company (notice the singular form of that word) to write the proposal.
Yes, there is a problem in public education but it certainly doesn’t lie in the classroom.
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Beurofarts? I love it. Maybe instead of Reformers, Refarters?
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They can neither expet to remain immune, nor should they. Yes, the Resistance is ratcheting up: from opt out to who knows what. When one mixes rapacious corporations with government consent and educational abuse, it makes for a toxic brew and a counter response.
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One thing we can be sure of is that the “malicious denial of service attack” could not be traced back to a teacher or teacher union.
Because if it were, that information would be emblazoned on the front page of every paper in the nation.
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This could very well be hacktivists. Not saying I condone it but if you think hacktivists don’t have children taking the tests your very wrong. And I’m sure they feel they are well within their right to attack pearson
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Without seeing the evidence, I don’t buy the “denial of service” claim (too convenient)…
….buuuuut there are without a doubt high school (and even junior high) kids who know far more about programming (and hacking) than their parents (and even many professional programmers) do.
The folks at Pearson are incompetent fools if they have not assumed from the design phase of software development that people would try to hack into their system and protected against that eventuality.
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“This could very well be hacktivists. Not saying I condone it”
I do condone it!! Unethical and immoral laws call for civil disobedience if not outright revolution.
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My thoughts exactly.
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We live in a no excuses world, and “we were hacked,” isn’t good enough. Obviously these programmers don’t have enough “grit” to be successful.
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Pearson is based in the UK
I’m thinkin’ they probably have more “brit” than “grit” (unless maybe they show old John Wayne and/or Clint Eastwood movies in the company cafeteria)
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TAGO!
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Withhold payments.
Although I don’t trust education adminimals to have much clue about how to write a bid proposal and then follow through when the contractor doesn’t complete its end.
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I’m in Minnesota. This “hacking” claim surfaced today, two days after the initial breakdown and statewide suspension of testing. This reeks of CYA. But what do you bet that Pearson still has the contract for next year? Yeah.
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Good. I hope they continue to DDos attack them.
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Bill Gates should be proud. He was a hacker in his youth. Aren’t we encouraging all our students to study code and learn STEM at the expense of all else? At my daughter’s university they have cut back the humanities courses to the point that she can barely register for next year’s courses in order to finish her double major English/Education major in four years. I wonder if these geniuses ever read any scifi or dystopian novels and learned about the laws of unintended consequences?
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It could be hackers. Certainly, Pearson is not a beloved corporation.
It could also be a “normal” failure of the technology. I’ve wondered about this regarding the PARCC testing being designed for computer use. There’s pretty much a guaranteed failure rate for any computer. It’s why you have back up computers on space vehicles and airplanes where only having one would risk fiery death.
You have millions of kids having to take tests at roughly the same time on computers. Some of them will fail. The more kids taking the test the more a small failure rate will result in a large number of kids not being able to take or finish the exam. That’s not a tremendous deal if failures are random but only if we’re using the exams just for system monitoring. But the reformers tell us these are essential for ALL kids so nobody slips through the cracks so a failure of technology means a kid might be “left behind”.
What’s Pearson’s procedure for that? For that matter, what’s their plan for things going wrong on mass scale when servers have troubles?
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