June 30, 2023

Oak Park and River Forest High School in Illinois accidentally reset all students’ passwords to the same password, “Ch@ngeme!”

The school sent an email to parents on June 22, 2023, stating that the password reset was due to an unexpected vendor error during a cybersecurity audit. The email also said that students should update their passwords to a unique one as soon as possible.

However, the school’s cybersecurity mistake allowed any student to access any other student’s Google account. Manning Peterson, the mother of an OPRF student, said that she was able to log into several of her son’s peers’ Google accounts after the password reset.

The school realized its mistake the next day and sent another email to parents stating that the Education Technology Department would be emailing them a special password process over the weekend that would be unique to their specific student.

The sources for this piece include an article in TechCrunch.