Florida is the latest victim of a cyber attack, leaving many students unable to log in and complete the writing portion of the Florida Standards Assessment, but the Sunshine State hasnt been the only place where technological issues have caused problems for standardized testing.
Just a year ago, Kansas was in the same position as Florida is this year: It was the first year the Sunflower State had administered the Center for Educational Testing and Evaluation exams under a new set of education standards, and the roll-out was anything but smooth.
As Kansas went through the initial run-through of the pilot tests, the testing servers became overloaded with traffic from a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack from an unknown source.
DDoS attacks are usually coordinated by two or more people (or bots) and usually target high-profile websites like banks or businesses. The attacks bring so much traffic to servers that websites become overloaded, ultimately resulting in sluggish performance or a full-out website crash.
Kansas suspended the test until the glitches had been worked out and the website was adequately protected against further attacks.
In Florida, the story went pretty similarly -- except for the fact that students were actually trying to take the test when the cyber attack took place.
Nervous students taking a new, unfamiliar test were greeted by a blank screen when they went to log in to the FSA. Thousands were unable to log in to the test, while others who were able to begin the test couldnt complete it at all.
Commissioner of Education Pam Stewart said the department would look into the issues -- and what they found was something much darker than a simple computer glitch.
The American Institutes for Research notified the Florida Department of Education that the server errors were a result of a cyber attack, and Stewart sent the Florida Department of Law Enforcement on the hunt to find out who was responsible.
We 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, she said.
Its not too difficult to instigate a DDoS attack. For as little as $150, buyers can purchase weeklong DDoS attacks on the black market.
So far, its not clear whether the perpetrator of the attack was someone who was upset with the implementation of the new test or if the attack was simply random.
Opponents of the test say they dont follow the departments excuse of a cyber attack.
Thats certainly a way to take the pressure off of them for doing a test where the department failed to feed multiple warnings, said Dr. Karen Effrem, executive director of the Florida Stop Common Core Coalition.
Some have taken to social media to voice their apprehensions over the news.
Don't believe it for a second, wrote Rachel Tendrich on the Stop Common Core SE Florida Facebook group.
@EducationFL Correction: counterattack, wrote Will Hanley, a history professor at Florida State University. The#FSA itself was the initial cyber-attack.
Testing eventually resumed in Florida, with 87 percent of the FSA writing tests having been administered by Thursday morning, but there was still no word from the FDOE or the FDLE on who was responsible for the server attack at that time.
