Fragile Technology

Hackers breach UC-Berkeley database; info for 160,000 students, alums at risk

"Hackers, possibly from Asia, have stolen about a decade's worth of personal information on current and former UC-Berkeley students, the university announced Friday. The breaches involved records dating to 1999 at the school's health center that included Social Security numbers, health insurance information, immunization history and the names of treating physicians."

That's 160,000 worried alumns.

South African exam results delayed by computer problem

A computer failure is being partially blamed for a delay in releasing exam results for some of the 550,000 students in South Africa who sat their matriculation last year. Delays in filing results by some schools are also being blamed.

The Education Department is now reviewing what went wrong and preparing a report for the Education Minister.

Maury County report cards late

A computer server going down has been blamed for late distribution of report cards for students in local schools in Maury County, Tennessee.

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Hackers steal social security numbers

Hackers have accessed the University of Rochester's computer network and stolen 450 social security numbers belonging to current and former students.

According to the university, the information was taken from a non-academic student database and copied illegally to an off-campus IP address. The breach was discovered by school officials on Wednesday. An investigation is continuing.

The University has notified the students, and relevant authorities.

100,000 student records leak onto file sharing network

Computer giant IBM has been forced to apologize after one of its clients, a Board of Education in Japan admitted 100,000 student records leaked onto the Winny file sharing network, following a virus attack.

The lost data includes names, account numbers and other data stored on the tuition fee bank transfer system for the 2006 fiscal year. The leak occurred last June, after a computer belonging to an IBM Japan subsidiary was infected with a virus.

IBM is writing to those affected to apologize.

School districts failed by coding error

The Nebraska Education Department has admitted a coding error by a contractor led to two school districts being labelled as failing federal accountability standards. Educators in Ponca and North Loup-Scotia school districts were surprised to receive letters saying that they did not meet the standards.

41 individual schools also received the "needs improvement" designation.

The department's data contractor, Quilogy Inc. of Omaha, made a coding mistake in part of the federal accountability information. That somehow affected which school districts were displayed as needing improvement.

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Teachers owe back taxes due to computer error

Teachers in Eastern Carver County public schools may owe the IRS up to $2,500 each due to an error in payroll software used to pay them. The software has incorrectly calculated the withholding tax on their salaries for some time, with the total back debt estimated at $3million.

"The finance staff of the district, formerly known as the Chaska School District, discovered the error in a payroll system while testing new finance and human resources software last month. The district immediately notified the IRS and plans to pay the correct amount with its next quarterly tax payment in January."

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Houston teenager expelled and charged with felony for accessing school records

A teenager in Houston, Texas, has been expelled from Klein Oak High School and faces felony charges after accessing data on 5,000 employees held in an unsecured and unprotected directory on the school network. The teen was clicking around the school network's directory tree via his laptop in class one day, and came across a folder containing the private data. Clearly it was not secured with a password or any other access permissions. He copied it to a USB key on his laptop.

The teen's father is standing behind his son, saying the child realises he did do something wrong, but there was no malice or ill intent intended. The school, despite expelling the teenager, also admits their systems were poorly protected:

"The school district admitted that not all files are password protected, but other restrictions are in place to prohibit access. "

When corporal punishment is counselling

Corporal punishment hasn't been a feature in US schools for many years. But it turns out that computer codes still exist just in case a student requires 'paddling'. Statistics for Richmond County schools last year suggested 9 students had been 'paddled'. But investigations have revealed human error was at fault. Schools are required to keep track of discipline issues, and to do this, a set of code numbers is used to indicate the punishment metted out. Turns out someone couldn't type:

"Each had been inadvertently entered into a computer system using the code for corporal punishment, which is "10." They should have been recorded as "100," for counseling."

Students fail IT course after school submits work in wrong format

A school in East Leake, Nottinghamshire, UK has apologised to students after an entire class their diploma in digital applications because their work was submitted to the third party marking organisation in the wrong format.

The head teacher at Harry Carlton School says it was due to 'technical glitches'.

Proving that lightening can strike twice, at least where fragile technology is concerned, 29 students from another school, Cotelands School, Ruskington, Lincolnshire were failed for the same reason. There an official confessed it was human error. And another called it 'an honest misinterpretation'.

The irony is that the Harry Carlton is a maths and computing school. You'd think the teachers would know their PDFs from their DOCs.

Pupils fail course over IT errors

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