KENS reports: The Northeast Independent School District says it’s been hit by the latest craze in computer viruses known as ransomware. It is a type of malware or virus that limits users from accessing parts of their system, typically forcing the victim to pay some type of ransom in order to get their data back….
Category: Education Sector
Escambia County School hit with payroll system security breach
Stephanie Nelson reports: The Escambia County School System is one of three in the state hit with a payroll accounting system security breach that allowed fraudulent tax returns to be filed in employee names. The systems, which include Alexander and Dothan city, use Innovak – a Spartanburg, S.C.-based provider platform for financials. Ongoing investigations at…
University of Liverpool database of 6,500 staff posted on dark Web forum
John E. Dunn reports: Israeli researchers have discovered the contact details for everyone working and teaching at the University of Liverpool circulating on a dark Web forum where it is being promoted to launch targeted phishing attacks. Read more on ComputerworldUK. For many universities, such contact details are considered public domain and/or are freely available on…
FL: Former charter school employees trying to avoid identity theft after sensitive documents left in dumpster
Amanda Ober reports: A day after learning their sensitive information was carelessly tossed into a dumpster and then strewn about a busy road, people drove to DeLand in hopes of avoiding becoming the victim of identity theft. Papers containing the Social Security numbers and tax returns of school employees in DeLand were tossed into a…
“Weev” hijacked 29,000 printers to spew anti-Semitic flyers across US colleges
Mary-Ann Russon provides additional details on Weev’s hack of printers to spew an anti-semitic message: Auernheimer used a single line of Bash script code to scan the internet for unprotected printers that were connected to the web using the open port 9100, and then created a PostScript file containing a flyer advertising a white supremacist news website…
Anti-Semitic fliers at Princeton U., other colleges were work of known hacker
Kevin Shea reports: The anti-Semitic fliers found on printers at Princeton University and dozens of other colleges last week were the work of a hacker once prosecuted in New Jersey on charges he stole 120,000 email addresses from AT&T-connected iPads. Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer, a self-described “white nationalist hacktivist” now living in the partially-recognized country of Abkhazia, said…