Department of Education Breach Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (DEP1768379458)

In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the Department of Education breach identified under incident ID DEP1768379458.

The analysis begins with a detailed overview of Department of Education's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/department-of-education, the number of followers: 109477, the industry type: Government Administration and the number of employees: 23811 employees

After the initial compromise, the video explains how Rankiteo's incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score. The incident score before the incident was 778 and after the incident was 712 with a difference of -66 which is could be a good indicator of the severity and impact of the incident.

In the next step of the video, we will analyze in more details the incident and the impact it had on Department of Education and their customers.

On 13 November 2025, Victorian Department of Education disclosed Data Breach issues under the banner "Victorian Government School Student Data Breach".

Hackers accessed the information of current and past Victorian government school students through a school's network.

The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting Victorian Department of Education systems, and exposing Names, email addresses, school names, year level, encrypted passwords.

In response, teams activated the incident response plan, moved swiftly to contain the threat with measures like Temporary disabling of systems to prevent further access, while recovery efforts such as Working to ensure no disruption to students for the 2026 school year continue, and stakeholders are being briefed through Email notifications to parents, public disclosure.

The case underscores how Ongoing, with advisories going out to stakeholders covering Communicating with schools to ensure no disruption to students.

Finally, we try to match the incident with the MITRE ATT&CK framework to see if there is any correlation between the incident and the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

The MITRE ATT&CK framework is a knowledge base of techniques and sub-techniques that are used to describe the tactics and procedures of cyber adversaries. It is a powerful tool for understanding the threat landscape and for developing effective defense strategies.

Rankiteo's analysis has identified several MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques associated with this incident, each with varying levels of confidence based on available evidence. Under the Initial Access tactic, the analysis identified Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating breach occurred through a school’s network and Valid Accounts (T1078) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating accessed the personal information...through a school’s network. Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified Credentials from Password Stores (T1555) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating encrypted passwords were compromised. Under the Collection tactic, the analysis identified Data from Local System (T1005) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating names, email addresses, school names, year levels compromised. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating no evidence that the stolen data has been publicly released. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Tools (T1562.001) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating temporarily disabling affected systems to prevent further exposure. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Destruction (T1485) with lower confidence (30%), supported by evidence indicating temporarily disabling affected systems and Data Manipulation: Stored Data Manipulation (T1565.001) with lower confidence (40%), supported by evidence indicating potential risk due to exposed student data. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.