Marie Weidmayer reports: MSU will spend an estimated $2.9 million on identity theft protection in the wake of the data breach that exposed university records of about 400,000 people. According to a statement from MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon, MSU will provide credit monitoring and identity theft protection free of charge to everyone affected. “We have a reserve fund that…
Category: Education Sector
NL: Erasmus University Data Breach Exposed Students’ Medical and Financial Information
JP Buntinx reports: When Erasmus University was hacked a couple of weeks ago, it appeared that only student names, addresses, and logins were obtained. But that is only part of the real story. A total of 270,000 webforms residing on one particular web server were breached during the attack. Close to 5,000 forms contain student medical information,…
NYS audit of Glen Cove City School District finds deficiencies in IT procedures
NYS Comptroller DiNapoli has released the state’s audit of the Glen Cove City School District . The audit concerned portable electronic devices. Key findings from the audit: There was no written policy for notifying the IT office of new hires, keeping track of equipment assigned to employees and collecting equipment when an employee leaves District employment. The District’s…
Carleton U. hit by ransomware, students told to keep Windows PCs away
Iain Thomson reports: Carleton University in Ontario, Canada, has confirmed it has been hit by a ransomware infection that crippled some of the Windows machines on its main campus. Systems at the university started to go down on Tuesday, and its IT department reported that email, network drives and the central university student portal had…
MT: Bigfork school computers breached
Hilary Matheson reports: Bigfork School District will not submit to ransom demands after the district’s computer network was compromised over the weekend by ransomware. Information technology staff have been working to recover computer files and remove the malicious software, which encrypted and locked files from being opened. It’s often the case that ransomware is not…
18-Year-Old “Computer Genius” Charged with Launching DDoS Attacks
Catalin Cimpanu reports: US authorities charged Michaela Gabriella King, 18, of Murrysville, Pennsylvania with launching multiple DDoS attacks against Franklin Regional High School, the school she was attending. According to investigators, King used the BetaBooter DDoS stressor to launch DDoS attacks on her’s school’s network, from her home computer, her mobile phone, but most of…