I just received this response from Max Lytvyn at MyDropBox: I’m sorry for the delayed response. I met with the development team regarding the issue you mentioned. It turned out this was a known issue since this past fall, and we had a fix ready. The fix was not deployed not to introduce any changes [...]

I’ve found a second critical security flaw with anti-plagiarism software.  This time, it’s with MyDropBox, and the problem is arguably more severe.  Again, private student data and student work are being made available to third parties. I’ve reported the problem to MyDropBox, and will provide more details on this after I hear back from them.

Blackboard Beyond‘s Greg Ritter sent me a note announcing that “the issue [I] experienced with SafeAssign that enabled [me] to gain access to a SafeAssign user’s paper has been resolved. Blackboard released a new version of the SafeAssign central service as well as a new version of the SafeAssign Building Block last Tuesday, November 20.” [...]

I received a call this afternoon from a third-party developer who confirmed the Blackboard Beyond Initiative is working aggressively on a fix for the critical flaw in its SafeAssign product reported at EF on Tuesday. The good news is that student data is no longer being distributed into the wild. This is a huge gain [...]

After reading yesterday’s post on SafeAssign at least 31 times today, Blackboard Beyond Initiative product director Greg Ritter (who also blogs) called me to voice Blackboard’s objections over sharing information on the software flaw that broadcasts submitted students’ papers across the Internet. I thought a personal call from the company was much better than receiving [...]