Steven Luke and R. Stickney report: San Diego Unified School District officials are informing parents and former students of a large data breach. Personal data including Social Security numbers from as many as 500,000 students was compromised or possibly stolen, officials say. The breach dating back to January 2018 was uncovered in October by district IT employees who…
Category: Education Sector
Man pleads guilty to phishing scheme that victimized Connecticut school employees
A 36-year-old Nigerian citizen pleaded guilty Thursday before a federal judge to a conspiracy charge stemming from a scheme to obtain the personal identifying information of school employees, including some at Sacred Heart Academy in Hamden. Olukayode Ibrahim Lawal, last living in Smyrna, Georgia, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Jeffrey A. Meyer in New…
Dozens of SF State student accounts hacked in phishing attacks
Joshua Chan reports: Dozens of students were shocked to learn that they were suspended from SF State last week when an email appearing to be from California State University’s chancellor gave them the bad news. But when they clicked on a link in the email, the truth was revealed — they had just been hacked….
San Bernardino Community College District notifies students whose personal info was exposed in spreadsheet gaffe
Errors involving spread sheets continue to contribute to breaches. Consider this description in a notification from San Bernardino Community College District – Crafton Hills College Campus. The breach occurred on October 25: What HappenedWe recently learned that a District employee inadvertently sent a spreadsheet containing certain individuals’ information to a community college distribution list. Although the…
ME: School department officials notify current and former staff of hack
WABI reports on a hack impacting employee, but not student, data: Last week, former and current employees of AOS 77 in Washington County were made aware of a data breach in the school department’s central office. The superintendent tells us he sent a letter to about 2,000 people making them aware some of their personal…
North Korea-linked Hackers Target Academic Institutions
Ionut Arghire reports: A threat group possibly originating from North Korea has been targeting academic institutions since at least May of this year, NetScout’s security researchers reveal. The attackers use spear-phishing emails that link to a website where a lure document attempts to trick users into installing a malicious Google Chrome extension. Following initial compromise,…