L.A. Unified School District (LAUSD) students have reportedly figured out how to bypass security restrictions on iPads issued to them by the school district, giving them access to non-educational internet sites, according to the L.A. Times. As a result, the district has decided to delay distribution of the devices till further notice.
The source details that almost 300 students at Theodore Roosevelt High School hacked through security so they could surf the Web on their new school-issued iPads. A couple of senior administrators reported the breach to the Board of education through a memo that said, “As student safety is of paramount concern, breach of the … system must not occur.” Other schools reporting the problem were Westchester High and the Valley Academy of Arts and Sciences in Granada Hills.
Students began to tinker with the security lock on the tablets because “they took them home and they can’t do anything with them,” said Roosevelt senior Alfredo Garcia. Roosevelt students matter-of-factly explained their technique Tuesday outside school. The trick, they said, was to delete their personal profile information. With the profile deleted, a student was free to surf.
L.A. Unified School District Police Chief Steven Zipperman suggested, in a confidential memo to senior staff obtained by The Times, that the district might want to delay distribution of the devices.
“I’m guessing this is just a sample of what will likely occur on other campuses once this hits Twitter, YouTube or other social media sites explaining to our students how to breach or compromise the security of these devices,” Zipperman wrote.
Roosevelt High School was the first school to start distributing the iPads to its students, as part of a rollout aimed a putting an iPad in the hands of every student in the country’s 2nd largest school system.
