FLVS HACKER
Florida Virtual School discovered a massive breach in their system that affects thousands of students and teachers throughout Florida.
By Makayla Allen ([email protected])
The online learning website, FLVS, discovered a breech affecting over 350,000 current and former students and teacher's personal information which had been purloined by hackers. FLVS states these records contains student's names, birth dates, school account numbers, their usernames and passwords, as well as their parent's names and emails addresses. Another 1,800 Leon County School teachers had their information stolen along with their social security number and phone number.
The breach transpired two years ago around May 6, 2016 and February 12, 2018 but, wasn't called to attention until last Friday March 9, 2018. The IT staff officially discovered the breach on February 12 when the cybercriminal posted on a hacking site and began bragging about how they hacked the Florida virtual School. Dwyane Denny, the cyber security expert, asserts "So the first thing you want to do is, if you are a parent, contact all three of the credit reporting bureaus and tell them you want to lock down your child's account." By contacting these bureaus, the parent's child account information will be locked, and no credit can be applied that requires using the social security number. The FBI and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement has an open investigation. James Fuller said that Florida virtual school also hired a private cyber security investigate team and they discovered that no financial information was stolen from the system. The cyber security found that hackers obtained all the data from a single server that was accidently open, Fuller said. On March 9th, the company broadcasted that all affected clients will have free identity protection services for a year through Experian. Also, the company has added auxiliary protocols to make sure this breach will occur again. The company asserted "FLVS takes its obligation to protect the privacy of personal information very seriously and deeply regrets this incident." |
Daniel Fernandez, a 10th grader in the Florida Virtual School
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