Six months after the Florida Department of Education launched an investigation into a server attack that left thousands of students across the state unable to take the new Florida Standards Assessment test, the FDOE still has no answers to who was behind the server attack or why it took place.
In March, students in Florida sat down at their computers to complete the FSA but reached a roadblock when many were unable to complete the test or even log into the FSA system.
The state education department initially blamed malfunctions on an overloaded server which was unable to take the traffic of test-takers statewide. Later, the department blamed the malfunctions on a cyber attack and teamed up with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate.
"The department has been working with FDLE ... when we were notified about the problem and we will continue to provide them with any information possible to ensure they identify the bad actors and hold them accountable to the fullest extent of the law," said Commissioner Pam Stewart after the department began taking a second look at what caused the technical glitches to occur.
On Wednesday the department released the results of its six-month investigation -- and the results came up dry for a suspect or a motive behind the attacks.
According to the department, the attack was a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack -- among some of the most common attacks on high-profile websites for banks and credit card companies.
DDoS attacks overload a server using thousands of IP addresses. Once the attacks hit the server, it often becomes slow and unresponsive. In the case of the FSA server attack, the FDLE found over 29,000 unique IP addresses were potentially used to "launch numerous attacks" against the FSA server.
Most of the IP addresses were believed to be from foreign countries, although some came from the U.S. as well.
According to a press release from the department, the investigation did not find that any test results or personal student information had been compromised.
Commissioner Stewart made sure to try to placate parents' concerns that their children's data had not been compromised as a result of the attack.
"I am incredibly grateful to Commissioner Swearingen and his team of investigators at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for their prompt response to the cyber attack that affected so many of our state’s students during statewide testing this spring," she said. "Most importantly, I want to reassure our state’s students, parents and educators that, because of the nature of the cyber-attack, no student information was accessed and the content of the assessment was not compromised."
Stewart said the department would continue working with American Institutes for Research, the parent company of the FSA, to make sure the test was safe going forward.
This is a breaking story. Check back for updates.
Reach Allison Nielsen at allison@sunshinestatenews.com.
