ACT school students lose Google Classroom after being spammed with porn

Parents are looking for answers after school students in the nation’s capital were spammed with nudity and horrific images last week.

Students in the ACT were unable to do their homework or assignments over the weekend as access to Google Classroom apps was cut after students as young as primary school age were spammed with inappropriate content, including pornography.

On Friday afternoon, students began receiving spam messages via email, some of them reportedly containing links to or requests for nudity, as well as pictures of dead infants.

Emails seen by the ABC showed students requesting the spammers stop sending the inappropriate material.

“What is going on?” one student asked at 12.11pm.

“Who are you all and why am I part of this?” wrote another.

“We don’t even go to the same schools,” a third student said.

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A screenshot of some of the emails students sent in response to the spam. Picture: ABC News

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Canberra IT consultant Dave Hall first became aware of the incident when his sons aged 12 and 15 came home from school talking about it, though he’s concerned he wasn’t told sooner.

“The school and Education Directorate were both aware of the incident by around 1pm but hadn’t contacted parents by the end of the school day,” he told news.com.au.

“Some of the content was graphic and pretty confronting for some of the kids.”

He said his sons received around 100 messages each, and although the Directorate emailed parents an explanation at around 7.30pm, he “doubts many parents will be checking their emails after dinner on a Friday night”.

Mr Hall reviewed a couple of the emails that were held in the cache of his son’s Chromebook (access to emails had already been cut off).

“These were a mix of kids asking others to stop replying, encouraging prank calls, one person soliciting nudes and a bunch of messages from kids being kids,” he said, adding that both his boys said they were sent porn.

The Australian Federal Police, the eSafety Commissioner and the ACT’s chief information officer are reportedly involved in an investigation according to the ABC.

A spokesperson for the Office of the eSafety Commissioner said it “has not received any reports or complaints regarding explicit material being emailed to schools in the ACT” but were aware of it and were monitoring it, though currently there was no “investigation” so to speak.

“Our tailored resources have already been made available to affected school communities. We have provided support and assistance and will continue to monitor and provide assistance, where required.”

“ACT public schools experienced an email incident today which involved spam emails containing inappropriate material being circulated to students,” a letter sent to parents on Friday night said.

“We are aware that some students have copied emails to their personal device, we would encourage you to speak with your child and have them delete any content,” the letter added.

It’s believed the use of Google Classroom resources played a role in the attack and the services were cut off for the weekend.

Students in the ACT were exposed to inappropriate material over email by spammers. Picture: Fiona Goodall/Getty Images

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“We extend our apologies to ACT College students without access to Google Classroom over the weekend,” ACT Public Schools wrote in a statement on social media.

“Please be reassured that your college will be understanding and accommodating of any impact.

“We hope you can focus over the weekend on things you are able to achieve, research for assessment tasks, exercise and time with friends and family.”
ACT education Minister Yvette Berry was directly affected and deeply concerned.

“My own children received some emails as well,” Ms Berry told the ABC.

“There was some inappropriate material and some of a sexual nature, so it is very concerning,” she added.

She said the department will have to bolster its defences because the “students are very tech savvy” and while internal safety measures are supposed to stop children accessing the full panacea of human depravity available on the internet, “it’s very difficult” to stop them accessing the content outside of school.

“This is the world we’re in so we need to make sure we continue to be prepared and resilient around these kinds of issues,” Ms Berry said.

Student emails were turned off after students started spamming one another with inappropriate content.

Ms Berry released a further statement on Sunday explaining how the incident occurred.

During a security update to its Google education platform in April, the ACT Education Directorate created a series of year-group email distribution lists.

At around 10am on Friday, one student attempted to share their work with their classmates but instead they accidentally sent the email to every publicly educated year 8 student in the ACT.

“From there, other students used the year 8 email distribution list to share content,” Ms Berry said.

“Some students quickly figured out how to email other year groups using the year 8 email distribution list code,” she added.

Mr Hall said he was “surprised the Directorate didn’t have controls on who can send to these lists”, adding “this was a disaster waiting to happen”.

Ms Berry said it was a “small number” of students who shared the “inappropriate material, including pornographic images”, which they would have had to access on private devices “because content like pornography cannot be accessed from within the ACT public schools network”.

No external body hacked into or exported information from the system.

Ms Berry said the Education Directorate expected students would get access to Google Drive and Google Classroom by the end of Monday and access to emails by the end of the week.