Jason Hidalgo reports: The Lyon County School District has joined the growing list of local agencies hit by hackers after a virus took down its systems earlier this month. Superintendent Wayne Workman confirmed to the Reno Gazette Journal on Monday afternoon that the school district is working to restore its systems after a virus made…
Category: Education Sector
1.4 million student Social Security numbers found unencrypted in Maryland
Does anyone remember the massive data security incident involving the University of Maryland in 2014? Here’s a link to some of this site’s preliminary coverage of that breach. Hundreds of thousands impacted, lots of media coverage and analyses, and you’d hope that the state would have learned its lesson about storing and protecting student and…
Syracuse schools’ hit by ransomware; ransom demands increase as days go by
Julie McMahon reports: Ransomware caused the Syracuse City School District’s week-long computer outage, a source said. The district’s internet has had systemwide outages since an “event” early Monday morning, officials said. Officials released little information about the investigation and cause of the computer outages. In a statement Friday afternoon, a spokesman said an “attack froze…
Hackers target Monroe College with ransomware, demand $2 million in bitcoin
Stephanie Pagones reports: Monroe College is “under cyberattack” by hackers who demanded approximately $2 million in bitcoin, police and school officials said Thursday. The school’s computer programs were hacked around 6:45 a.m. Wednesday by a group that got in through ransomware and halted the system, cops said. The hackers sent a message demanding that the…
CA: KHSU Hit by Cyber Attack
A university radio station has gone silent after being hit with a ransomware attack. Thaddeus Greenson reports: The dead air you’ve been hearing on KHSU is the result of a ransomeware attack that disabled most of the station’s programming systems and storage servers, according to Humboldt State University. A university spokesperson tells the Journal the…
K12 Inc. Data Exposure Opens Doors to Students’ Personal Information
Alyson Klein reports: A K12 Inc. company database that included information for 19,000 students was available for anyone with an internet connection to see for at least a week, according to a report from Comparitech, which describes itself as a pro-consumer organization that offers security services. It’s not clear that anyone with ill intentions accessed…