Everything you need to know about Mobile guardian getting "hacked"
This blog is for your information and aimed towards people living in Singapore experiencing school.
What is Mobile Guardian
Mobile Guardian is a tool that schools can use to facilitate the learning of students in school. It can also act as a tool that helps parents and schools alike block unsafe connections from occurring on a child's device.
Their website states this:
"Mobile Guardian is a powerful, mobile device management (MDM) solution purpose-built for districts and schools. Our multi-OS platform currently supports Android, Chromebook, iOS, and macOS devices. Our parental control product, Mobile Guardian for Home, lets parents create safe online experiences for their children on their mobile devices."
https://www.mobileguardian.com/about-us/
The incident occurred on the 4th of August and it affected the North America, European, and Singapore distributions of Mobile Guardian as stated in the security incident report by Mobile Guardian. The sources provided will be referenced below and all sources I've scraped for information will be listed below too.
As stated in the report, "Mobile Guardian experienced a security incident that involved unauthorized access to the iOS and ChromeOS devices enrolled to the Mobile Guardian platform" and has halted their services. MOE has also wiped all MOE issued devices, removing Mobile Guardian and allowing free use of the students' devices with limitations of the enrolled environment of the school's email.
Below are my sources for this part:
https://www.mobileguardian.com/security-incident-august-2024/
What happened
The Mobile Guardian security report states, "This resulted in a small percentage of devices to be unenrolled from Mobile Guardian and their devices wiped remotely." However, this is not related to students being unable to connect to the internet, not being able to boot/reboot/shutdown their device, or receiving an error message: “Guided Access app unavailable. Please contact your administrator.” If this is what you came here to read, you are at the wrong place. Mobile Guardian took effort in trying to contain the threat by halting its services. This resulted in students not being able to log in to the Mobile Guardian platform with restrictions on the device. Students are advised to contact their school's IT department to re-enroll their device.
https://www.mobileguardian.com/security-incident-august-2024/ https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/students-lose-internet-access-notes-on-personal-learning-devices-after-mobile-guardian-app-glitch
What should my next steps be if I got affected
MOE has announced on the 5th of August that all personal learning devices are to have Mobile Guardian removed to restore the usage of the device back to what it used to be. Mobile Guardian has also stated that there has been no evidence that any files have been accessed by the perpetrators.
https://www.mobileguardian.com/security-incident-august-2024/Timeline of what happened
Aug 4: Mobile Guardian said it was alerted to suspicious activity on its platform and detected unauthorized access to its system.
Aug 4: Mobile Guardian took action and restricted affected devices.
Aug 5: MOE announced that it will remove Mobile Guardian from all personal devices.
I am doing this to practice my researching skills. This blog might not be updated and should not be trusted as an accurate source of information. Please do your own research from other reputable sources. I am only 15.
