14 DAY TRIAL // A student of Oak Harbor High School managed to get his hands on credentials for accounts that allowed disabling email addresses at multiple educational institutions in the district.
The incident became known on February 19, when an investigation was started to find out why the inboxes could no longer be accessed.
It was discovered that a teenager, whose name remains undisclosed, had stolen the passwords of certain staff members who had access to sensitive parts of the network and were authorized for managing email accounts for both other members and students.
According to Kellie Torrmey, spokeswoman for Oak Harbor School District, the “individual inappropriately obtained passwords to certain accounts” and blocked access to some email accounts belonging to staff members, as well as for his high school and two middle schools.
The method used by the teenager to obtain the increased privilege is still to be determined by system administrators, who say that the databases containing information about students and grades were not impacted by the hacker.
However, if the young hacker managed to access staff emails, there is a chance that some credentials, or at least some private conversations, have been exposed.
Recently, a server failure occurred at Oak Harbor School District and there is suspicion that the incident may be related to the student’s deed, although evidence about this has still to be found.