MOE orders removal of Mobile Guardian app after 13,000 Singapore students remotely wipe their devices – Mothership.SG

A global cybersecurity incident involving device management app Mobile Guardian affected approximately 13,000 secondary school students in Singapore whose personal educational devices were remotely wiped on August 4.

This was announced by the Ministry of Education (MOE) in a statement on August 5.

The Ministry of Education also announced that as a precaution, the app will be removed from all iPads and Chromebooks used by students for educational purposes.

Global Cybersecurity Incident

The MOE statement said that on the night of August 4, schools notified them that some students using iPads or Chromebooks as personal learning devices were unable to access apps and information stored on their devices.

The Ministry of Energy immediately raised serious doubts about the company Mobile Guardian, which deals with managing mobile devices.

“Mobile Guardian’s investigation has revealed that a global cybersecurity incident involving unauthorized access to the platform has occurred, affecting customers worldwide, including in Singapore,” the MOE said.

Initial checks by the MOE found that the perpetrator remotely wiped the devices of some 13,000 students from 26 secondary schools in Singapore.

As MOE added, there is currently no evidence that the perpetrator had access to user files.

The app will be removed from students’ educational devices

As a precaution, the Ministry of Education will remove the Mobile Guardian app from all iPads and Chromebooks.

According to the MOE, work is underway to safely return these devices to normal use.

In the meantime, other mitigation measures are being considered to regulate the use of devices and support learning during this period.

“We understand that students are naturally concerned and anxious about the incident. MOE is working with schools to support affected students, including deploying additional IT teams to schools and providing additional educational resources,” the MOE added.

Previous platform issues

Device management platform Mobile Guardian has been appointed as the official supplier to schools by the Ministry of Education in 2020.

The platform enables schools to manage and secure thousands of mobile devices provided to students. It also offers classroom management tools and parental controls.

In April, the Ministry of Education filed a police report following a data breach at Mobile Guardian’s headquarters, which resulted in access to personal information about parents and staff from 127 Ministry of Education schools.

In late July, students also reported technical issues with the platform, such as being unable to connect to Wi-Fi or losing saved notes, according to Strait Times.

The problems have affected more than 1,000 students from at least five Ministry of Education schools, many of whom have returned to using pen and paper for taking notes and completing assignments, ST reported.

The Ministry of Education emphasized in a statement that the security incident of August 4 is not related to the earlier technical problems that students had to face at the end of July 2024.

“The Mobile Guardian investigation has determined that the incident in July, which caused some students in multiple schools to have difficulty connecting to the internet and/or receive error messages, was caused by a human error in the configuration of Mobile Guardian,” the MOE said.

Top image from Canva and Mobile Guardian / YouTube