Breach Notification

Edmodo Breach - May 2017 - Copy of notification

Dear Parents and Caregivers,

We are notifying you because we were alerted that one of our educational resources Edmodo was recently hacked. Edmodo is a classroom collaboration tool used by many educators throughout the world.

The hack compromised student and teacher accounts by disclosing usernames, email addresses and passwords.

Edmodo, in response to the breach, hired information security experts to investigate the incident. Edmodo’s notification to the District states:

Our investigation has now confirmed that user names, email addresses, and hashed passwords were acquired by an unauthorized third party. The passwords were “hashed” (or encrypted) using the strong and robust bcrypt algorithm, and they were also “salted,” which adds an additional layer of security.

We have no indication at this time that any user passwords have been compromised, but we strongly recommend that all users reset their passwords as soon as possible.

There are only a handful of teachers district wide that had used the service previously. We have advised those teachers to immediately change their passwords. As a precaution, if your student has an Edmodo account, it is recommended that they change their password.

Newtown Public Schools treats the privacy of your students with the utmost priority. You will be notified immediately if there are any changes in our discovery of this situation.