Seattle Public Schools today confirmed that a student stole a teacher’s password and changed his and other students’ grades without authorization.
The Stranger broke the password theft story yesterday after receiving an anonymous tip. The district could not immediately confirm yesterday whether students had been involved. The grade tampering was discovered by a teacher at Ingraham High School at the end of spring break, which occurred from April 15 to 22.
The district’s IT staff heard about the issue earlier this week and began investigating, along with security staff, district spokesperson Teresa Wippel says. According to a statement released by SPS today afternoon, the investigation reveled that a “student unlawfully gained access to a teacher’s room by entering the room next door and then unlawfully tampered with the lock in order to gain access from the hallway into the room.”
The student then used a key logger to get access to a teacher’s password, entered into the Easy Grade Pro (EGP) teachers’ grading system, and changed his and other students’ grades.
“We have taken appropriate disciplinary action against the student,” the statement from the district says.”Due to privacy laws, we will not release what that action is, or the student’s name.”
Based on the district’s investigation, the district believes that the grade tampering was limited to Ingraham. The district plans to change all passwords at the school by Monday.
The district is also auditing grade book changes in all secondary schools—because that is where teachers use Easy Grade Pro—as a precaution and monitoring for unusual activity in its major systems.
Wippel says that Seattle Police have been notified and are investigating the case.
Daaaaamn!
God, that’s epic. You forgot the ‘Awesome’ tag.
Is this got something to do with that ClassMates popup that used to haunt every browser?
Time for EGP to step up they’re login security (I don’t know why more institutions don’t use a password coupled with a point-and-click style passkey entry like my savings bank uses). I mean, of all the things that are going to be hit, this is right up there with WOPR and Cameron’s dad’s Ferrari.
SPS’s network is pretty Mickey Mouse… Servers full to the brim, a now unsupported OS, and a ghost crew IT dept for its size. The only reason this was detected was because the kids were dumb enough the leave the keylogger behind.
Most kids are far to lazy to cheat so creatively (I’ve received “original” work with hyperlinks still underlined). I’m perversely impressed by the effort.