Gloucester High School hit with nationwide hacking attack

On Thursday, numerous students at Gloucester High School were afflicted with Google account troubles as fake emails were sent to their school accounts.

Some of the emails, which may have included advertisements for buying cars from teachers at GHS or official-looking emails from the school superintendent, had links in them—and whoever clicked those links was then locked out of their Google account until IT was able to fix the issue.

“It’s been really frustrating not to be able to access my email or study materials during AP testing week.” said senior Annette Love, who was one of the many affected students.

Gmail on the school Chromebooks was locked indefinitely as IT worked to resolve the issue and stop the scam emails from getting through the school’s firewall. IT declined a request for comment on the matter.

This was not an isolated incident, however. While GHS does not use the application, Canvas—which is another digital hub for classrooms—was hacked on Thursday as well. The incident caused thousands of high schools and universities across the country to scramble and find different ways to administer assignments in the middle of exam season. 

Students would see a ransom note appear on their screens instead of the typical Canvas application, claiming that a hacker group called “ShinyHunters” breached the company’s parent platform. Anyone studying for finals at the affected universities was locked out of their accounts and had to find alternative ways to do so.

Luckily, the same could not be said for Gloucester High School, even if the attack did come in the middle of AP exams.

“There were no issues with AP testing due to the hacking,” said Mr. Dipietro, the AP Coordinator for Gloucester High. “All students were able to login to their tests without issues. Everything worked out well.”

While it is unclear whether ShinyHunters was involved in the hack that affected students’ Google accounts at Gloucester High School, it is clear that the data breach could pose a major risk to schools around the country. 

Gloucester High School students lost access to their school email accounts for four days, which made communications between students and teachers difficult.

“I’m excited to have my email back,” junior Aleena Brown said. ” I felt restricted not being able to have updates about my work and extracurriculars, or access my Google Drive.”