A hacker has breached Cell Guardian, a digital classroom administration platform used worldwide, and remotely wiped information from at the least 13,000 scholar’s iPads and Chromebooks.
Cell Guardian, a ‘Google for Schooling’ accomplice, is a cross-platform (Android, Home windows, iOS, ChromeOS, macOS) one-on-one answer for Ok-12 faculties that provides an entire suite of machine administration, parental monitoring and management, safe net filtering, classroom administration, and communications.
The platform introduced it suffered a security breach on August 4, 2024, the place a hacker gained unauthorized entry to its platform, impacting its North American, European, and Singaporean cases.
This incident is unrelated to a misconfiguration that precipitated an IT outage on July 30, 2024.
Because of the breach, Cell Guardian says a small share of iOS and ChromeOS units have been wiped remotely, however there is no proof of information entry or exfiltration.
“This [incident] resulted in a small share of units to be unenrolled from Cell Guardian and their units wiped remotely,” reads the announcement, including that “There isn’t any proof to recommend that the perpetrator had entry to customers’ information.”
The service has been suspended for now, so customers can’t log in to the Cell Guardian platform, and college students are restricted to restricted entry on their units.
Though Cell Guardian says the incident solely impacted a “small share of units,” Singapore’s Ministry of Schooling says that the risk actor used the platform to wipe the iPads and Chromebooks of 13,000 college students within the nation.
“MOE instantly registered sturdy issues with cellular machine administration firm Cell Guardian,” warned a press launch from the Ministry of Schooling.
“Cell Guardian’s investigations discovered that there had been a world cybersecurity incident involving unauthorised entry to its platform that affected their clients globally, together with these in Singapore. Primarily based on preliminary checks, about 13,000 college students in Singapore from 26 secondary faculties had their units wiped remotely by the perpetrator.”
In response to the cyberattack, the federal government has eliminated the app from all scholar studying units throughout the nation and helps restore these which have been impacted.
BleepingComputer has contacted Cell Guardian to study extra in regards to the incident and its international influence, akin to what number of scholar units in North America and Europe have been impacted, however a remark wasn’t instantly out there.
