Kevin O’Sullivan and Michael Powell report on attacks by the ransomware team known as Vice Society on U.K. schools. Student data was disclosed on Vice’s dedicated leak site after their victims refused to pay ransom demands. The Daily Mail report includes Vice’s attacks on five schools and a sixth-form college, including Pilton Community College, The…
Category: Education Sector
Dutch Uni Gets Cyber Ransom Money Back… With Interest
AFP reports that because the value of BTC had increased dramatically, a ransomware victim wound up getting back a small fortune when they recovered the bitcoin they had paid. The southern Maastricht University in 2019 had paid 200,000 euros ($208,000) in bitcoins to attackers who had encrypted hundreds of Windows servers and backup systems. But the…
Dripping Springs Independent School District notifies 367 of breach
Although no details can be found online yet, it appears that Dripping Springs ISD in Texas notified the Texas Attorney General’s Office of a breach affecting 367 Texans. The breach reportedly involved the names of individuals, Address; Social Security Number Information; Driver’s License number; Medical Information; and Health Insurance Information. Notice to the state was…
Illuminate breach victims are still first being notified
Spotted today: a notification by the Renton School District in Washington that they notified 20,509 Washington residents on June 17 dues to a breach that sounds like the Illuminate breach (based on the dates reported by Renton): https://agportal-s3bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/databreach/BreachM13493.pdf
Ransomware attack caused ongoing Napa Valley College internet and phone system outage
Edward Booth and Howard Yune report: The Napa Valley College website and network systems were knocked offline as the result of a ransomware attack roughly two weeks ago, a spokesperson for the school has confirmed. Napavalley.edu was still dark as of Saturday afternoon, as NVC continued an investigation that began shortly after the site vanished…
New York State School District Audits Released in June
New York State Comptroller DiNapoli released more school district audits in June. As always, some of the audits do not reveal all the concerns or recommendations. Some concerns or recommendations are shared with districts confidentially for security reasons. Here are summaries of audits of school districts released in June that relate to school district IT:…