Hacker claims to have sold VCE exam papers to students after government website hack

The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority’s website has been hacked during the state’s exam period, with the culprit launching a tirade of expletives and claiming without evidence to have accessed student papers.

On Wednesday evening, a message attributed to someone using the alias “DaggerElite” appeared on the VCAA’s homepage banner, claiming to have sold exam papers to “hundreds of students” across the state. They further alleged VCAA had “dogshit security standards” that had allowed them to “map out this shitshow site and learn all about its internals” and download a copy of 2026 exam papers from its internal file servers.

A spokesperson for the VCAA strongly refuted the hacker’s claims, which they said were “fabricated” and there was “no evidence at all” that any VCE exams had been accessed or leaked.

The hacker also claimed they had sent the exams to the students via an email address belonging to the law firm Go Ahead Lawyers, whose email security system they said they had hacked. A spokesperson for Go Ahead Lawyers said it was “not involved in the reported hacking incident involving the VCAA website” and its firm “did not access or distribute any exam papers”.

The VCAA chief executive, Andrew Smith, told ABC Radio Melbourne that it was working to restore the website as a “matter of urgency”, adding the likelihood exam papers could be downloaded from secure printers was “very, very low”. The incident has been reported to Victoria police.