Brian New reports: A rising number of cyberattacks on Texas schools is exposing a troubling vulnerability. A CBS 11 I-Team investigation found in the past two years at least 67 school districts in Texas have suffered a cybersecurity breach. The incidents range from teachers accidentally emailing student personal information out to the whole class to…
Category: Education Sector
Pearson to pay $1M fine for misleading investors about 2018 data breach
Carly Page reports: Pearson, a London-based publishing and education giant that provides software to schools and universities has agreed to pay $1 million to settle charges that it misled investors about a 2018 data breach resulting in the theft of millions of student records. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced the settlement on Monday after the…
Cyberattack Hits Israel’s Bar Ilan University: ‘Data Is Being Erased Right Now’
Amitai Ziv reports: A cyberattack targeted Israel’s Bar Ilan University Sunday, the school reported. An internal email sent out by the university’s IT department said the attack was ongoing and urged staff to shut down their computers. “A serious cyberattack is underway right now against Bar Ilan University,” the internal mail said. “The attack involves…
Brooklyn Tech students uncovered a NYC schools data breach.
Pooja Salhotra reports: Teachers’ social security numbers, student academic records, and families’ home addresses are among the dozens of pieces of information a group of tech savvy high school students stumbled across on Google Drive this year. The documents — many of which contained confidential information — were leaked because of a quirk in the…
NC: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools email gaffe exposes medical info on 3,000 students
From the no-need-to-hack-if-it’s-leaking dept., WBTV reports: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools sent an email to hundreds of parents that included person and medical information of nearly 3,000 students. The CMS email was to confirm all students who were enrolled in the After School Enrichment Program (ASEP). It was sent out the afternoon of August 6 and went to…
k-12 school districts fall prey to Pysa ransomware
—– A DataBreaches.net report by Dissent and Chum1ng0 —– In Part 1 of this series, DataBreaches.net described a number of attacks by Pysa (mespinoza) threat actors on medical entities in the U.S. In Part 2, we look at eight k-12 public school districts in the U.S. who either appear on the threat actors’ dedicated leak…