We announced on 2 May 2024 that the party behind the data breach has gained access to student and personnel usernames and email addresses. Further investigation has shown that the perpetrator has gained access to the usernames and email addresses of all City personnel, as well as personal IDs and addresses of students, guardians and personnel from the Education Division. Additionally, the perpetrator gained access to content from the Education Division’s network drive.
In practice, this means that the perpetrator may additionally have gained access to the personal IDs and addresses of students, guardians and personnel of the Education Division as well as those of its contractual nurses and children in their care, and their families. These include information about fees (and the grounds thereof) for customers of early childhood education and care, sensitive information about the status of children, such as information requests by student welfare or information about the need of special support and medical certificates regarding the suspension of studies for upper secondary students, as well as the sick leave records of Education Division personnel.
We can not rule out the possibility of the perpetratorgaining access to data of persons under a non-disclosure restriction.
The breach of the Education Division network took place through a vulnerability in a remote access server. We are not aware if the data breach was targeted at data in other divisions. However, the City is monitoring all of its networks closely.
It may not be possible to identify each document or person affected by the data breach, which means that any and all Education Division customers may be affected by the breach. Customers of the Education Division include:
- current and past students in basic and upper secondary education and their guardians.
- children in early childhood education held by the City and their guardians.
- current or past students at the Helsinki Adult Education Centres.
- and customers of the City’s student welfare, such as those of school social workers or school psychologists.