A website for Victoria’s upcoming VCE exams was hacked following claims leaked tests were illegally sold to ‘hundreds’ of students.
A message appeared on the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority’s website on Wednesday.
It thanked the authority for its ‘dog***t security standards’ that allowed hackers to infiltrate the site.
The hacker, identified only as ‘DaggerElite’, then revealed that leaked tests sold online were able to be individually tracked.
The message has been removed but the website remained offline on Wednesday night.
The VCAA website is used by students to see their VCE exam results. Those results will be available at 7am on December 10.
The exams are for senior high school students were scheduled between October 29 and November 18 this year.
The hacker started the message by thanking those who ‘bought’ the test papers ahead of the exam.
A hacker published a message (above) on the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority’s website on Wednesday
‘However, I’m here to say a big thank you to a much cooler group of people – those who purchased an Official VCA 2026 Exam from me ahead of the Exam day this year,’ they wrote.
‘Thanks to the support of these awesome hundreds of students statewide, we will hopefully be able to prepare the exam pages to be sent out even earlier than we have been able to this year, so you can study the paper you will sit in 2027 well in advance!’
The hacker then shared details of their apparent scheme.
‘A massive thank you also goes to VCAA and their dog***t security standards on their website, allowing me to map out this s***show site and learn all about its internals,’ they wrote.
‘Another thank you to their select External Printing Providers for their s*** security policies allowing me to log-in to their systems and download a copy of the 2026 Exam papers from their internal file servers, LMFAO!
‘And finally thank you to GoAhead Lawyers for fing up email security on their website, therefore allowing me to send everyone who purchased an exam this year an anonymous email under their name.
‘The success of this campaign could not have been possible without all their help together.’
DaggerElite then claimed to know everyone who bought the alleged cheat sheets and warned them against sharing them with others.
The hacker claimed to have sold the test sheets to students ahead of exam days
Join the discussion
Should students who bought leaked exam papers face harsher penalties or is the system to blame?
‘Before anyone seeing this decides to go ask people to share the papers for the next few exams, I would like to remind you that those holding a paper are very well aware that each sent copy is individualised with an identifiable signature embedded in it, and it’s in their best interests to keep their papers to themselves, lest it be found out who purchased a 2026 VCAA Exam paper,’ they wrote.
‘This is DaggerElite, and it has been an absolute pleasure working with all of you this year.’
Year 12 students told the Daily Mail the message was shocking after a similar incident in 2024, when exam materials were leaked.
Melbourne student, Raphael, 18, who has specialist maths, physics and geography exams this week, said: ‘I don’t understand how VCAA and its external providers can mess up this badly after the debacle in 2024. It’s pretty impressive.’
Annabelle, 16, who has a philosophy exam on Friday said about the hacker: ‘What an ego, they think they’re going to have a movie made about them.’
Following the 2024 incident in which answers were accidentally leaked on cover sheets, then-Education Minister Ben Carroll ordered the ‘root and branch review’.
GoAhead Lawyers, an immigration firm, said it was not involved in Wednesday’s hack.
‘We do not have anything to do with this and we don’t know why our name was used,’ a spokesperson said.
‘We don’t even deal in a sector related to VCAA or school students.’
A spokesperson for the VCAA confirmed there was a security breach on Wednesday.
‘The VCAA homepage was hacked earlier today,’ they said.
‘The VCAA is conducting a forensic investigation to determine the extent of the attack.
‘There is no indication that exam papers from today or previous weeks have been accessed.’
