WA: Student finds ‘back door’ in YCS program
Megan Hansen reports:
Yelm Community Schools shut down its computer account system Skyward after a student discovered a potential security breach.
“A student showed us a back door,” said Director of Technology Dennis Wallace. “We immediately shut down access to Skyward.”
Skyward is a computer account system that the school, students and parents can access which contains the students’ personal information, schedule, grades and lunch balance.
Wallace said the student found a way to gain access into the account system and immediately informed his teacher.
The district’s technology department called the student in to question the breach.
They then fixed it and had the student try and gain access again. He did and the school had to go back in and fix it again.
Read more in Nisqually Valley News
2 comments to “WA: Student finds ‘back door’ in YCS program”
WSIPC IT - February 25, 2009
I would like to add some essential missing information to this post. There was no breach of Skyward, but a breach of local information security practices. A list of logons and passwords was placed in an area of the Yelm local network that domain users (students) could access. The situation has been rectified.
admin - February 25, 2009
Thanks for clarifying. That doesn’t sound like a “back door” into Skyward, as much as someone left multiple keys to the front door lying around.