An app used for student teacher communications, Seesaw, was hacked, and and users were treated to pictures of Goatse. (For the love of God, if you do not know what Goatse is, Do Not Google It!!!)
This is not a surprise, Ed Tech is notoriously insecure, and it could have been worse, it could have been a hack into people's passwords and bank logins. (OK, maybe that's not worse. Let me repeat this, for the love of God, if you do not know what Goatse is, Do Not Google It!!!)
It should be noted that this is software that we are trusting out children to, and it's getting hacked by people who are using it to post decades old shock internet memes instead of actually hurting people. (For the love of God, if you do not know what Goatse is, Do Not Google It!!!)
There needs to be some regulation to prevent our tax money to go to half baked software:
[Update: Seesaw told Ars that "less than 0.5 percent of Seesaw users were affected. Seesaw blocked the attack swiftly to prevent the message from being distributed widely." Although it "can't discuss the specifics of additional steps" taken to enhance security so far, some of the "additional mitigation steps to prevent an attack from achieving this scale in the future" include "refinements to our rate limiting, alerting, blocking, content detection, and login systems."]
Original story: A popular parent-teacher messaging app called Seesaw was hacked this week, resulting in families across the US receiving a Bit.ly link displaying one of the most widely shared shock images to ever befoul the Internet.
Vice posted a blurred screenshot of the text message that some parents received, confirming that the inappropriate image shared through Seesaw was Goatse, an explicit closeup image of (For the love of God, if you do not know what Goatse is, Do Not Google It!!!). Vice noted that over the years, the image has mostly been scrubbed from the Internet. However, for parents preparing to tuck in their first graders this week, its sudden resurfacing revived its original shock value from the Internet’s earliest days.
In the screenshot, one parent’s response was just a stunned “Um ???”
Seesaw is used by 10 million teachers in the US, and so far, the company has declined to specify how many accounts were impacted, NBC News reported Wednesday. NBC and Vice reporting confirmed that the issue was widespread, though. Reports showed that the inappropriate image was sent to families in school districts in Illinois, New York, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, Michigan, and South Dakota. Some schools were so concerned that they updated their websites with pop-up windows and alerts to notify parents, urging them to avoid using the app and instead email teachers until the issue could be resolved.
Let me finish by noting that for the love of God, if you do not know what Goatse is, Do Not Google It!!!
This cannot be stressed strongly enough. That which is seen cannot be unseen.
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