Singapore to remove Mobile Guardian app after hack

SINGAPORE: Singapore's Education Ministry is removing the Mobile Guardian Device Management Application from students' personal learning devices as a precautionary measure after a reported system breach incident that affected about 13,000 students in the island republic.

The ministry said it was alerted on Sunday night by schools that some students who use iPads or Chromebooks as personal learning devices were unable to access their applications and information stored in their devices.

"Mobile Guardian's investigations found that there had been a global cybersecurity incident involving unauthorised access to its platform that affected their customers globally, including those in Singapore.

"Based on preliminary checks, about 13,000 students in Singapore from 26 secondary schools had their devices wiped remotely by the perpetrator," the ministry said in a statement Monday.

Currently, there is no evidence that the perpetrator had accessed user files.

The Education Ministry said efforts are underway to safely restore these devices to normal usage, and is considering other mitigating measures to regulate device usage to support learning during this period.

"The latest incident is not related to the earlier technical issues faced by students last month," the ministry said.

Mobile Guardian's investigations found that the July incident, which led to some students across numerous schools experiencing issues connecting to the Internet and receiving error messages, was due to a human error in configuration by Mobile Guardian.

-- BERNAMA