Kyra Gurney reports: Two months before the U.S. presidential election, international hackers slipped into the computer systems of at least four Florida school district networks in the hopes of stealing the personal data of hundreds of thousands of students. They infected the systems with malware — malicious software — that turned off the logs recording…
Category: Education Sector
University College London hit by ransomware attack
Alex Hern reported: University College London has been hit by a “major” ransomware attack which brought down its shared drives and student management system. The attack has also led to a number of hospital trusts suspending their email servers as a precautionary measure, in an attempt to prevent the repetition of last month’s damaging WannaCry…
University of East Anglia leaks the names of students who have been sexually assaulted, suicidal and had abortions to the whole department
George Martin and Matt Howard report: An email detailing confidential extenuating circumstances has been sent to every undergraduate student in the American Studies school at UEA, The Tab can exclusively reveal. It contained information about several private issues, including one student with suicidal tendencies, one who had an abortion and one who had been sexually…
Oklahoma U. shuts down file sharing service after failing to protect thousands of students’ records
Dana Branham reports: OU unintentionally exposed thousands of students’ educational records — including social security numbers, financial aid information and grades in records dating to at least 2002 — through lax privacy settings in a campus file-sharing network, violating federal law. The university scrambled to safeguard the files late Tuesday after learning The Daily had…
Washington State Uni notifies those affected by stolen hard drive
PULLMAN, Wash., June 9, 2017 — Today, Washington State University (WSU) announced that it is addressing a security incident involving certain community members’ personal information. Though there is no evidence the personal information has been accessed or misused, WSU is notifying impacted individuals and offering free identity protection services to those individuals whose personal information may have…
NC: Guidance counselor steals students’ info in $400K Medicaid scam
Carla Field reports: A man who was a public school guidance counselor and who owned a counseling service admitted in court Wednesday to using information about some of his elementary school students in a $400,0000 Medicare scam. Joseph Frank Korzelius, 46, of Tryon, North Carolina, pleaded guilty to health care fraud. Korzelius, who owns Western…