School Messaging App Has Been Hacked, Explicit Images Sent to Parents

September 15, 2022 By Raulf Hernes

(Image Credit Google)

On Wednesday, parents and teachers in New York, Oklahoma, and Texas reported that their messaging app had been hacked. The parents claimed they received messages containing an explicit photo that has gone viral on the internet. NBC broke the story. The photo was sent to parents and teachers in private chats via the Seesaw app. Seesaw, which claims to have 10 million teachers, students, and family members as users, declined to say how many users were affected. Sunniya Saleem, the company's vice president of marketing, said in an emailed statement that "specific user accounts were compromised by an outside actor" and that "we are taking this extremely seriously."

“Our team continues to monitor the situation to ensure we prevent further spread of these images from being sent or seen by any Seesaw users,” she said. The company stated in a follow-up email that the hacker or hackers did not gain administrative access to Seesaw, but instead breached individual user accounts via a so-called credential stuffing attack. In such an attack, hackers scour previous data breaches for username and password combinations. To avoid credential stuffing attacks, cybersecurity experts advise against reusing the same password across multiple sites. Some parents and teachers were sent links to bitly, a popular link-shortening service that hides actual web addresses. For some users, the app displayed the image in the chat automatically.

Some school districts issued warnings to parents not to open links sent through Seesaw. A pop-up warning greeted visitors to the Keeneyville Elementary School District 20 website in Hanover Park, Illinois, on Wednesday. “Please do not open any ‘bitly’ links that are sent to you this morning in a Seesaw message,” it says. “It may appear as a message was sent to you from another school family, but please delete the message immediately, without opening as inappropriate content was sent.” Castleton Elementary School in Castleton-on-Hudson, New York, confirmed the security breach on its website. "In the meantime, please send an email to your student's teacher if you need to speak with them," it said.

By Raulf Hernes

If you ask me raulf means ALL ABOUT TECH!!

School Messaging App Has Been Hacked, Explicit Images Sent to Parents

Walmart's GenAI Search Engine: Challenging Google's Dominance in Retail Search

Introducing the MSI Claw Handheld: Your Ultimate Gaming Companion

Uber Increases In-App Ads, Prompting Mixed Reactions from Customers

Apple's iOS 18: A Leap into the AI Era

Google's Regular Pixel 8 Won't Get Gemini Nano AI

MacBook Air M3 Makes Amends for M2's Storage Blunder

Samsung Unveils the Galaxy M15 5G

Elon Musk's xAI to Open-Source Chatbot Grok

Contra: Operation Galuga - A Modern Run-and-Gun Classic

Musk Confirms X's TV App Arrives This Week

WhatsApp Approves Anonymous Community Responses: Not yet Scheduled for Release

Google turns to AI as it fires 12,000 employees

Parents Push Congress for Stricter Social Media Laws

Learn How To Make Your Subject Stand Out In A Picture

5 Twitter Alternatives if You Plan to Leave the Social Network

How to Prolong Apple Watch’s Battery Life With Watchos 9.1 While Exercising