School head’s email hacked

Bogus email to students from principal contained swear words

An investigation is underway after a computer hacker gained access to the files of Julie Taylor, the principal of the Thomas Deacon Academy.

An investigation is under way after a computer hacker gained access to the personal files of a head teacher at a Peterborough academy. The hacker emailed 29 work documents to all 2,092 students at the Thomas Deacon Academy, in Queen’s Gardens, after infiltrating the school’s computer system.

The documents were emailed under the name of academy principal Julie Taylor with the covering email containing a number of swear words.

Now Mrs Taylor has called in IT experts to investigate the hacking, which took place on Saturday with the emails being sent out between 8.10pm and 8.20pm.

The academy’s system was immediately closed and all emails in and out of the academy were disabled after the incident came to light.

But Mrs Taylor moved to re- assure parents and students that confidential information about pupils had not been accessed.

She said: “Only three of the documents related to current or former personnel and there was nothing too senstive.”

She said information contained on the other 26 documents included such things as minutes of meetings and could easily be found on the academy’s website.

She said: “While the documents were emailed to all the students only a very few received them.

“That’s because some of the students alerted our onsite police officer the moment they received the emails and realised they were not from me. The system was shut down in 10 minutes and our IT experts began a forensic examination.

“We take any breach of our security very seriously and Cambridgeshire police have been informed.

“I am hoping this matter is resolved by the end of the week. It is saddening because these documents were sent out in an email under my name and contained a number of swear words.

“It is a very childish action, which makes me think this has been done by a rogue student or an ex-student.

All 2,092 students at Thomas Deacon Academy were emailed documents.