[BreachExchange] Student grades believed to be hacked at University of Regina

[Audrey McNeil]

https://globalnews.ca/news/3790701/student-grades-believed-to-be-hacked-at-
university-of-regina/

Students at the University of Regina might want to check their marks.

The grades of some students are believed to have been hacked.

“The integrity of those grades is core to who we are, so we’re taking this
matter extremely seriously,” Kim McKechney, University of Regina external
relations associate vice president, said.

Grading irregularities were reported to university authorities in late
August. Four classes in the faculty of engineering are now being
investigated.

McKechney wouldn’t say if the investigation was triggered by a tip from a
student or if it was a professor who noticed the grade changes.

Some students know that their grades were changed, but some don’t,
McKechney said.

“The process of notifying students is ongoing. It’s part of the
investigatory process,” he said.

Any student found guilty of changing a grade could face expulsion,
McKechney said.

“In this case I would underline that changing grades is of the utmost
seriousness,” McKechney said.

The university suffers from about 50,000 malware attacks a week, he added.

“Our IT systems are very robust. We’re certainly going to have these
situations where we encounter vulnerabilities, but in this case because
it’s being dealt with and we expect that the integrity of our grades will
remain intact,” McKechney said.

U of R computer science professor David Gerhard says stealing a password is
the easiest way in.

“We say that the weakest link in any security system is the human,” Gerhard
said.

“Whenever there’s a system that involves a password or something like that,
that kind of thing can be compromised if the people who are using the
system don’t use good password hygiene.”

Gerhard said it’s unlikely a new back door that was previously unknown was
discovered and used to change a few grades.

“More likely other damage would have been done if it was a larger hole in
the security system,” he said.

Students’ Union president Jermain McKenzie said he hopes the university
will take stiff consequences against any guilty students.

“I’m disturbed by it,” McKenzie said. “That’s really not fair for all of
the thousands of students here who work extremely hard.”

“I’m shocked, I thought there would be more security measures in place,”
Wil Norton, a software systems engineering student, said.

“It’s not fair, and it makes me sad honestly because I think if the
students have the work ethic to take the time to hack into their prof’s
computers, I think that same work ethic could just be used to do their work
properly,” engineering student Jacob Sauer said.

“I’m concerned for the university’s reputation, especially if this becomes
well-known across the country,” he added.

The hack impacted marks on classes held over the spring-summer semester.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.riskbasedsecurity.com/pipermail/breachexchange/attachments/20171009/bb006136/attachment.html>