Student grades

• 9 March 2000: Boston Globe reported a computer breakin at MIT
• report stated that 22 MIT students' grades had been changed
• turned out to be a spreadsheet usage error
• still, does not mean that accessing MIT grades is inconceivable

• June 2000: partial auxiliary copy of MIT grades was vulnerable
• simple attack provided access to a directory named "ftp dept6"
• files on the vulnerable server had hundreds of entries of the form:
  • student's ID number
  • student's name
  • name of student's faculty advisor
  • class number (e.g., "6.001")
  • student's grade
  • how the class counted toward graduation requirements
  • semester when class was taken

• data remained vulnerable for a while despite fix attempts
• raised issue to Dean of Students and Undergraduate Education

Copyright 2000, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. All rights reserved.