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Uncovering Security Flaws in Digital Education Products

Posted on Monday, March 9th, 2015 by Collaborative for Educational Services

Source: Natasha Singer, The New York Times
Date: 2/08/15
Link: Complete Article

Tony Porterfield uncovered security weaknesses on educational sites.

Tony Porterfield - photo by Ramin Rahimian, for NYT

 

When Tony Porterfield’s two sons came home from elementary school with an assignment to use a reading assessment site called Raz-Kids.com, he was curious, as a parent, to see how it worked. As a software engineer, he was also curious about the site’s data security practices.

And he was dismayed to discover that the site not only was unencrypted, but also stored passwords in plain text — security weaknesses that could potentially have allowed unauthorized users to gain access to details like students’ names, voice recordings or skill levels. He alerted the site to his concerns. More than a year later, the vulnerabilities remain.

“A lot of education sites have glaring security problems,” said Mr. Porterfield, the principal engineer at a software start-up in Los Altos, Calif. “A big part of the problem is that there’s not even any consensus of what ‘good security’ means for an educational website or app.”

Continue Reading at The New York Times

Filed Under: National News Tagged With: Technology

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