Centennial School District Hacked, Officials Say

PORTLAND, OR — The Centennial School District on Friday announced a security breach within its student information systems. District officials do not currently believe any important student information was taken, however the investigation is ongoing.

Two Centennial High School students — a junior and senior, both under 18 — are responsible for data breach, school district spokeswoman Carol Fenstermacher told Patch in an email Friday. One of the students reportedly told authorities they did it to "show that the system could be hacked," Fenstermacher said, but police are working to determine any specific or nefarious intent.

The district's IT staff reportedly found the access points that were hacked by the students and has secured them, Fenstermacher said. Law enforcement is determining the full extent of the breach and figuring what, if anything, was taken.

Fenstermacher said the hackers were able to access the names, birthdates, addresses, schools and grade levels, phone numbers, student IDs, and demographic information of all current and former Centennial School District students.

"We are in the process of identifying students who may have had additional information accessed and will be communicating with the families of those students with more specific information as soon as possible, which we anticipate will be within the next few weeks," Fenstermacher said. "At this time, we do not believe the Social Security numbers of any current or former students were accessed in this incident."

The district currently serves just more than 6,300 students, Fenstermacher confirmed, noting it's unclear how many of the current and former students were actually affected.

The district reportedly plans to provide an update on the situation later next week. Fenstermacher said updates will also be posted on the district's website.

"I don't believe this has happened in Centennial before, but am trying to get someone in our IT department to confirm that," Fenstermacher said. "Once we get through assessing everything that may have been accessed and informing (parents and students), our IT folks will be working on a plan to make sure this doesn't happen again — but the details on that are not yet flushed out."

This post has been updated with comments and details from Centennial School District spokeswoman Carol Fenstermacher.

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