Thursday, September 26, 2013

drag2share: LA officials may delay school iPad rollout after students hack them in a week

source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/26/los-angeles-school-ipads-hacked/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget&ncid=rss_semi

LA iPad initiative hits the skids after students 'hack' iPads in under a week

Just a week after it began the first phase of putting iPads in the hands of all 640,000 students in the state, the Los Angeles school district already has a fight on its hands. In a matter of days, 300 children at Theodore Roosevelt High School managed to work around protective measures placed on the Apple tablets, giving them complete access to features -- including Facebook, Twitter and other apps -- that should otherwise have been blocked.

Students bypassed the security lock on the device by deleting a personal profile preloaded in the settings -- a simple trick that has the school district police chief recommending the board limit the $1 billion rollout before it turns into a "runaway train scenario." For now, officials have banned home use of the iPads while they assess ways to better restrict access -- they would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for those meddling kids.