03.18.10
Achtung Cheaters! The Paller-scope is watching…
Montgomery County school officials have not yet closed gaps in their computer system that allowed students at a high-performing Potomac high school to change dozens of grades using a device that can be bought from Amazon.com for $69. And other school systems, including Fairfax County, remain just as vulnerable, school officials said Tuesday.
At least eight students at Winston Churchill High School are believed to have used the readily available device to obtain teachers’ passwords for the school system’s grading system. The school system, Maryland’s largest, has determined that the grades of 54 students were improperly changed in 35 teachers’ records.
From the Washington Post here.
“That’s the first hack that every kid who becomes a criminal has done,” Alan Paller, “director of research at the SANS Institute,” told the newspaper. “Right now, attack software is so good that the average user in a small business or a school cannot protect himself and still get his job done.”
Previously in the Paller-Scope — from the archives.