Two B.C. student loan websites are down after an apparent hack on Sunday (May 2) evening.
StudentAidBC and LearnLive BC both showed a black screen with “Guardiran Security Team,” and a message that the sites had been hacked by a group called RT3N.
The websites read a series of rotation messages including “Game Over for you but My Game has Just begun.” By Monday morning both websites had stopped reading the message and had stopped loading entirely.
In a statement on Twitter Monday, StudentAidBC said that the “website is temporarily unavailable as we work to resolve an issue affecting multiple government websites.”
Kayla Doane, a Chilliwack woman who has a student loan, told Black Press Media she’s worried about what kind of information the hackers might have.
“I’m just concerned about my SIN and financial information they have for my repayment. I’ve been the victim of identity theft. It’s really scary hackers were able to get into a government system and potentially steal thousands of (people’s) private information,” she said.
The StudentAid BC website is temporarily unavailable as we work to resolve an issue affecting multiple government websites.
— StudentAid BC (@studentaidbc) May 3, 2021
On Monday morning, the advanced education ministry told Black Press Media that they were investigating the issue.
“At this time, we are not aware of any personal data being compromised. We have taken immediate steps to mitigate any further exposure. This includes temporarily shutting down affected websites while we work with our IT staff to resolve the issue,” the ministry said in a statement.
More to come.
