Hacker Sends Offensive Emails To Plainfield School Job Applicants
PLAINFIELD, Ill. (CBS) -- More than 20,000 people who have applied for jobs in Plainfield School District 202 have received offensive emails from someone who hacked into the computer system over the weekend.
WBBM Newsradio's Steve Miller reports the content of that email was just four lines long.
"It said the n-word, and then it said, 'Hey,' and the n-word again, 'What's up?'" said Jason Ross, who received one of the thousands of emails.
A spokesman for Plainfield School District 202 scurried to tell people the system Plainfield uses for online employment applications was hacked.
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"I had to read over this several times," job applicant Cheryl Sussewell told CBS 2's Brad Edwards. "I'm like, 'This is a joke.' But it wasn't."
Sussewell says she's still waiting on more information from the Plainfield school district.
District 202 spokesman Tom Hernandez said the person who hacked into the third-party website obtained at least 23,000 email addresses of applicants going back at least two years.
But the company that manages the online applications said the website wasn't hacked, it was accessed with legitimate credentials.
"First of all, AppliTrack was not hacked," said Keith Westman, vice president at Aspex Solutions, which manages AppliTrack, the online application system Plainfield uses. "Someone accessed an authorized Plainfield 202 user name and password to log into the system with authorized credentials and sent this obscene email."
AppliTrack fixed the breach Saturday, but was still trying to figure out what other personal information was compromised, Hernandez said. He stressed that Social Security numbers are not requested during the online application process.
Plainfield School District 202 said it's working with the police and the FBI.
