Michigan’s Online Bar Exam Delayed by ‘Sophisticated’ Cyberattack

Participant hold their laptops in front of an illuminated wall at the annual Chaos Compute
Patrick Lux/Getty
Tom Ciccotta

The Michigan state bar exam, which was offered online this year due to concerns about the ongoing pandemic, crashed due to a “sophisticated” cyberattack. Some exam-takers now want the software vendor to prove that the hackers were not able to access private user data.

According to a report by the Hill, law school graduates hoping to practice in the state of Michigan were sent into a state of panic yesterday when their online bar exam crashed.

Initially, the Michigan Supreme Court told students that the crash was the result of a “technical glitch.”

“A technical glitch with passwords for the Michigan Bar Exam has been resolved. Test takers are being emailed passwords and the test day will be extended to allow for the delay for some test takers to access the second module. ADA participants were not affected,” the court’s tweet read.

In a statement posted to Twitter, the company behind the exam software, ExamSoft claimed that they suffered a “sophisticated” cyberattack. Despite the attack, ExamSoft claims that it only resulted in a minor delay to students and that no user data was compromised.

ExamSoft experienced a distributed denial of service (DDOS) cyber-attack starting at 8:55am CST. This was a sophisticated attack specifically aimed at the login process for the ExamSoft Portal which corresponded with an exam session for the Michigan Bar. At no time was any data compromised by this attack. ExamSoft was able to successfully thwart this attack, albeit with a minor delay. This is the first time ExamSoft has ever experienced a DDOS attack at the network level. We worked closely with the Michigan Board of Law Examiners so that the exam could continue forward as scheduled with the appropriate extra-time allotted to enter the exam for those who may have been delayed. All exam takers were successfully able to start and complete all modules of the Michigan Bar exam.

Some students are now demanding proof that the cyber-attackers did not steal user data during the breach. A national advocacy group called “United for Diploma Privilege” has been working with legislators since March to replace the bar exam this year with an alternative method of licensure. In a tweet directed at ExamSoft, the group demanded

“Now ExamSoft is saying that there was a cyber attack this morning that affected the #MichiganBarExam. If this was such a sophisticated attack, what do they have to say about the biodata collected during exam administration?”

Stay tuned to Breitbart News for more updates on this story.

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.