Hackers hit virtual-learning lessons with porn, racial slurs in Pittsburgh Public, Trinity Area districts

Pittsburgh Public Schools and the Trinity Area School District were targeted by hackers who exposed students to pornography and racial slurs during remote learning sessions on Wednesday.

“This morning, we took immediate action upon notification of an inappropriate video that was embedded in the link of an educational video on Safe YouTube,” said Anthony Hamlet, superintendent of Pittsburgh Public Schools.

Hamlet said a teacher posted the link in an early childhood classroom dashboard on the Schoology learning management system that had inappropriate content embedded in a lesson that was supposed to contain a counting nursery rhyme.

The superintendent said the district has blocked the Safe YouTube website from district devices after learning that districts across the country have experienced the same problem.

“We want our families, students, parents and educators to feel safe during E-Learning,” said Hamlet, who vowed to make cyber security a priority.

The district’s first day of classes on Tuesday was marred by technical problems that prevented some students from logging into the laptops. Students also had issues on platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Schoology.

The Pittsburgh Public Schools district is using remote instruction for the first quarter of the school year to help slow the spread of coronavirus.

The district was scheduled to start classes Aug. 31 but had to postpone the first day of school to Sept. 8 because it was unable to get enough laptop devices for students.

Kimberly Hickman has three children – a first-grader, a third-grader, and a sixth-grader – at Brookline Elementary. She said she had to deal with several technical issues, including racial slurs appearing in her first-grader’s virtual classroom.

“We encountered the racial slurs coming through my first grader’s iPad. She can’t read the words, so she didn’t know what it meant, so I could quickly swipe that away,” Hickman said. “She’ll be on class and it’ll come down from the top of the iPad. We didn’t understand how to get rid of it.”

Hickman said the message appearing on her daughter’s device yesterday contained a racial slur.

So far, Hickman said, she’s gotten no help from the district in addressing these concerns.

She said a secretary at the school helped her address technical glitches on devices for her two sons. But she said she’s afraid her daughter’s iPad will still be portraying inappropriate messages today.

Hickman said other parents have complained to her that sixth-grade students were acting inappropriately during video classes yesterday. Her own children have heard parents cursing in the background while their children had their audio turned on for class.

Trinity Area in Washington County also reported that a security breach in a fifth-grade cyber classroom at West Elementary exposed students to racial slurs.

Superintendent Michael Lucas said the school’s principal contacted parents by phone to inform them about the incident.

Hackers also exposed students to inappropriate content that included racial slurs and an “alleged pornographic image” at two virtual classrooms at the high school, according to Lucas.

“Fortunately, our teachers were able to end the sessions and gather evidence to share with the police and administration,” Lucas said, adding that a criminal investigation has been launched to identify the hackers.

“Students and parents should know that the local authorities and Trinity staff are tracking IP addresses to identify where messages or images originated,” the superintendent said. “We are disappointed, but we will not give up. Our teachers have worked too hard to let the criminal actions of one or two stop us from safely teaching students remotely.”