Unbelievable! A second-grade student in Palm Beach County hacked into the school district’s computer system.
What was that nonsense about distance learning being the wave of the future? Ha!
The Palm Beach County School District is in the midst of a massive computer security crisis that draws into question the authenticity of every assignment completed by every student since “distance learning” began, after BocaNewsNow.com learned that an elementary school student hacked the school district’s password system.
We are not revealing the password convention that is used in the school district, but the second grader’s — you are reading that correctly, the second grader’s — hacking resulted in an emergency login change for “live” morning meetings in several elementary schools last week. It did not result — yet — in a district-wide reassignment of student passwords for the School District’s “Portal” which provides access to Google Classroom.
It is unclear if teachers and administrators were aware that the second grader’s hack potentially impacted the entire 176,000 student school district.
Every Palm Beach County School District student is now utilizing “Google Classroom” during “distance learning.” The system is used for email, classroom work assignments, live communication with teachers, and tests. The hack potentially lets any student log into any other student’s Google Classroom account.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I feel public school students and families got burned by ed reform in 2009-2012. Ed reformers dominated during that period and despite their endless marketing of themselves they did not improve PUBLIC schools. In my state they harmed public schools because they either cut funding or did not effectively advocate against funding cuts.
It’s very simple- they promised to improve public schools and they did not do that. I know they also promised to expand charters and put in vouchers, and they did succeed there.
I don’t want another crisis where public school students are thrown under the “innovation!” bus and I don’t want ed reform to dominate policy in THIS crisis because of what happened last time.
I look at the Obama Administration and the ed reform governors during that period- in Ohio, in Michigan, in Pennsylvania and I cannot help but conclude that they failed at their central promise, which was “improve public schools”.
Let’s not hire them again.
Jared Kushner is already looking to recruit the kid for his procurement team.
I don’t know about this? It seems a little fishy that a 7 yr old would have that much knowledge about computers to hack into a big system. Seems like this might be an over zealous parent trying to prove a point using his/her child’s account. While I think it is important that parents know just how poorly managed this data is protected by all the school systems, I don’t think that would be on the radar of a 7 yr old?
Sounds fishy to me as well.
Possible but not probable.
Though one can download automated password-cracker software online, how likely is it that a second grader would possess both the motive and the know-how to use it?
More likely that it’s a parent as you suggest or maybe even an older sibling who does not want to be caught.
Or maybe just a good guess at an easy password.
But improbable that a second grader would do it , nonetheless.
LisaM,
I had exactly the same thought! These kinds of stories often end up to be not quite as advertised.
Without revealing too much, let’s just say that the components of my district’s student account usernames and passwords are NOT what you would want to use as your bank login.
If you read the article you see this:
“Monday, a 10-year-old proved to BocaNewsNow.com that he was able to log into an unrelated 6-year-old’s account with the permission of that student’s parent.
The 10-year-old was given nothing but the name of the student in another grade.
That 10-year-old — using the hack widely shared among students — needed less than two minutes to find the 6-year-old’s account and enough identifying information to log in as the 6-year-old.
So, if not the 6-year old, then the 10-year old can do it with “the hack wide shared among students.”
The IT person has been asleep at the wheel while the hackers enjoy showing how flimsy the Google portal is. “One-click” interoperability, beginning with the one-click loading of class rosters, is becoming the international standard for instructional management systems.
So, if not the 6-year old, then the 10-year old can do it with “the hack widely shared among students.”
Most probable of all: a 15-year old shared the original hack with his little brother.
I hope that 2nd grader is NOT a future Bill Gates or Mark Zukerberg.
This detail at the end of the article– speculates my engineer husband– suggest this is indeed a setup that could be hacked by a 7 or 8yo. Automated password-cracker software not required.
“The School District’s I.T. department apparently never imagined that its simple default password naming convention could impact the accuracy, authenticity and online safety of every student in the Palm Beach County School District.”
This happens ALL THE TIME. Districts issue generic passwords. IT departments are not working to protect student data. They are working for the EDTech Consortiums that have infiltrated every aspect of district administration offices and programs. Consultant Contracts will continue to divert funds away from classrooms, force teacher cuts, increase class sizes and build out the super data corporate oligarchs want access to.
Here’s a vivid example of what these data plans look like.
http://specification.sifassociation.org/Implementation/NA/4.0/CommonTypes.html#TextDataType
Another Company Data Got Breached This Month!
https://www.privacy.com.sg/cybersecurity/home-chef-data-breach/?fbclid=IwAR1q5gvoQlWvvBN7mdllmg2jVygWdRyDJQsE8Y2bwF4Gs2gtONPYVyC2wNA