13,000 MOE students affected by software hack and some lost all their data.
The media did not disclose the full picture. IT Industry chatgroup describes it as a national crisis that is swept under the carpets:
Civil servants with IT background were sent to the affected schools, to wipe-out the whole device and remove the software. Usually when there is an software issue, we use software patches. Even crowdstrike didn't ask their users to delete the whole software or format their computers. In IT context, doing so means that we lost control of the situation.
Despite being an international company, this episode with Mobile Guardian affects only SG users.
The data of 10-20% of students' Ipad or Chromebooks lost their data. No serious hacker will be interested to wipe out student data. Moreover, schools store student data on different clouds, rightfully all clouds should have back-up. Only administrator-privilege gives you the right to destroy back-up data. It further hints that it is an inside job or a vendor/MOE error.
In summary, the hacking of software does not translate to data loss. There could be two issues happening in the same period. Did someone mess up and push the blame to Mobile Guardian?
and that why I always emphasis that the Generation X parents' home education to their Generation Z children is very important.
