Employees of Dracut Public Schools in Massachusetts weren’t as fortunate as those at Kanawha County Schools in West Virginia. Rick Sobey and Todd Feathers report that current and former employees’ personal information, including SSN, was acquired by a hacker after an employee fell for what the district describes as a “sophisticated phishing scheme.” They did not report…
Category: Education Sector
WV: Internal documents restored after ransomware hack on school district
WSAZ reports that Kanawha County Schools tell them their internal documents have been restored after a ransomware hack that occurred Wednesday evening. No personal information was reportedly accessed in the attack, and it appears that the school district did not pay any ransom. There’s no indication as yet as to how the attacker was able to inject the…
Ball State U. sends ‘accidental email,’ violates FERPA
Oops. The Ball State Daily reports: An email sent out on Tuesday did more than just inform students about their academic status. Students who earned a GPA below 2.0 were notified in December about their academic progress, and on Jan. 10, another email was intended to inform students about ways to improve their GPAs. But…
Princeton University becomes victim of MongoDB ransom attacks
Princeton University became one of the more than 27,000 entities that recently had their databases wiped by attackers who claim that if victims pay ransom, they’ll get their data back. The attackers have been able to access and overwrite databases in MongoDB installations that were left open on Port 27017. With no login or authentication required, anyone can access…
Los Angeles Valley College Hit By Cyber Attack, Pays Ransom
I’ve been sitting on this one for a while because it wasn’t clear if any personal info was involved. CBS had reported that Los Angeles Valley College in Valley Glen was subject to a cyber attack over the winter break, but it was not known how large the breach was or its scope. Now Breitbart is reporting that…
Ca: Thousands of University of Alberta students, faculty put at risk in malware security breach
Juris Graney reports: Malware installed on more than 300 computers put over 3,000 University of Alberta students at risk late last year, but because of a police probe resulting in charges against a 19-year-old man, the breach wasn’t shared campus-wide until Thursday. In a statement posted to its website, Gordie Mah, the chief information security…