Friday, March 28, 2014
NUIG exams in web blunder
Does my bum look big in this? The winner of the Metro Herald/NCAD/Forever 21 competition for the college’s fashion students to design clothing out of Metro Heralds goes on display at a party at the retailer’s Jervis Street store last night PICture: PAtrICK WALSH @tHePHoneogrAPHr PAGE 18
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THIRD-level colleges across the country are on alert after it emerged students at one university managed to gain access to exam papers through the internet. The incident happened at NUI Galway and resulted in a number of students accessing their summer maths exam papers. The IT security systems used by the Galway university are understood to be in widespread use across other Irish thirdlevel colleges. End-of-term exams at NUIG begin on April 15 and the maths papers were prepared by the college academics and uploaded on to the university’s server which is security protected. But it is understood that an internet search by a student seeking this year’s papers yielded unexpected results. Next month’s exam papers were found by the search engine used and word of their availability ‘spread like wildfire’, according to student sources. The papers were accessible for a number
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of days before university authorities became aware of the issue and immediately withdrew them. New papers have since been prepared. In a statement yesterday, NUI Galway confirmed it had replaced the exam papers in order to protect the integrity of the exam process. They are understood to be satisfied that there was no question of ‘hacking’ into the university server but that the papers were retrieved as a result of vastly improved internet searching capabilities. The incident has alerted the university to the need to upgrade its IT security. Maths students now believe the events will do them no favours when they come to sit their exams in a few weeks. With the initial papers now scrapped, any possible guidance from lecturers on likely questions will no longer be relevant.
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