EQAO says 'intentional, malicious' cyberattack led to literacy test system crash

The Ontario agency tasked with administering the firstonline literacy test to tens of thousands of high school studentsinthe province last week says it was forced to pull the plug by an "intentional, malicious and sustained"cyberattack.

• EQAO computer glitch frustrates students, province vows to find cause

The Education Quality and Accountability Office said Monday thenetwork hosting the "voluntary" online test wastargeted by an"extremely large volume of traffic from a vast set of IP addressesaround the globe."

It said the impact of the distributed denial of service attackcarried out by "an unknown entity or entities" was to block
legitimate users such as school boards and students from accessingthe test.

Most of the province's 900 secondary schools -- representing amaximum of 147,000 students -- had signed up toparticipate in thetest, which was a technical trial run before the first official testscheduled next year.

The EQAO's director of assessment said some 15,000 studentsappeared to have managed to complete the test, andthe agency iscurrently reviewing the data to see whether the results can later bereleased. However, there will not betime for another trial testbefore the spring, Richard Jones said.

There is no evidence at this time that the incident was linked toa similar cyberattack that affected websites such as Twitter andNetflix on Friday, Jones said.

He said the agency shares the frustration felt by students,parents and educators.

"We're totally shocked that this sort of attack would happen,it's certainly nothing that we expected at all," he said."We expected, as part of this trial, that we ... would find outthat there might be technical issues at the school or board level,for example, we might have some learnings there that we would beable to go from, but we didn't expect at all that there would be this kind of unwanted activity on our system."

The EQAO, which oversees standardized testing in the province,said it is confident that student assessments can successfully beadministered online.

The province's education minister echoed that sentiment, sayingoffering online testing is the best way to support students.

"We're going to keep ensuring that Ontario students have anopportunity to write this test online," Mitzie Hunter said."Of course, in the spring we'll ensure that there is a paper-basedbackup as well to ensure that all students are able to complete thetest."

An investigation into Friday's incident is underway and will leadto recommendations to prevent similar problems in the future.

The test was also meant to serve as a "risk-free" way forstudents to take it ahead of the next scheduled assessment in March2017.

If students passed the online test, it would count, but if theyfailed or didn't complete it, they would be considered "first-timeeligible" for the test next spring.

The program was open to all 72 school boards, as well as FirstNations and private schools.