Education technology giant PowerSchool has confirmed a data breach that may have exposed information on millions of schoolchildren, putting them at risk of identity theft. PowerSchool has over 18,000 clients,

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The hack has the potential to be one of the biggest of the year, but the edtech giant is refusing to answer important questions

Professor noted the need for continued pushes for multi-factor authentication for educational services that require such extensive identifying information.

PowerSchool, a widely used platform among districts in western Washington, including Seattle and Everett, confirmed the breach.

Bleeping Computer on Wednesday also reported that an extortion note the attacker sent to PowerSchool claimed that the personal data of 62.4 million students and 9.5 million teachers was swept up in the breach. PowerSchool said it’s offering two years of free credit monitoring to all those affected.

Four decades of student and educator information was stolen from PowerSchool – tens of millions are potentially affected.

PowerSchool, a software provider popular at K-12 schools, was the target of a data breach in late December that affected many districts in the U.S. and in other countries, according to the company and several impacted schools .

School workers say they resorted to crowdsourcing help among each other following PowerSchool's breach, fueled by solidarity and the slow response from PowerSchool.