Notice of the malfunction presented with the draw of the subjects from the Subject Bank at today’s high school exams jointly issued the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Digital Governance.

The announcement in more detail:

– The problem presented in the promotion exams of high school students was dealt with immediately, thanks to the actions of the ministries, in more than 9 out of 10 schools.

– There is no uncertainty for students who did not complete their exams today: They will be tested tomorrow as normal. A relevant circular will be sent to schools.

– The case concerns exclusively the internal promotion and graduation exams of Lyceums. It is in no way connected with the National Examinations – which have a separate subject transmission system.

analytically

The problem: Since the early hours of the morning, the topic bank platform (https://trapeza.iep.edu.gr/) which is managed by the Institute of Educational Policy and is hosted on EDYTE infrastructure (National Network of Technology and Research Infrastructures) received a large-scale and duration distributed attack (DDoS).

Simply put, there have been massive third-party hits to the platform (up to 280,000 connections per second) aimed at rendering it inoperable. These distributed DDoS attacks maliciously aim to prevent users from accessing the system smoothly. They are not a breach of the system nor are they able to gain access to its components and data.

Coping: With joint actions of IEP and EDYTE, the attack was contained at 9:20 and domestic connectivity and user access was restored. Malicious attacks persisted and continued after 9.20am, but were successfully dealt with.

important note: The system that transmits the subjects in the High School exams is different from that of the Pan-Hellenic exams, which can NOT be affected by this type of malicious mass visits.

Third year high school students: In some schools that did not take the subjects on time, the examinees left the examination centers, as a result of which some did not complete their examinations today.

So:

– For the A’ and B’ Lyceum students, who were not examined today, they will be examined in the specific course within the prescribed period, i.e. until June 15.

– The students of the 3rd grade of the General Lyceums, who were not examined today, will be examined tomorrow, Tuesday, and the results will be released the day after tomorrow, Wednesday, in accordance with the provisions of the relevant circular.

– The students of the 3rd grade of the Vocational High Schools, who were not examined today (it concerns a few hundred people), will also be examined tomorrow Tuesday and the results will come out in the evening of the same day.