Tag: SCHOOLS. | Page 19

Huntsville schools: Social Security numbers at risk in ransomware attack

December 21, 2020/in Computer Security

Huntsville city schools confirmed today that personal information including Social Security numbers of teachers and staff may have been exposed to hackers in a recent ransomware attack on the district’s computer system.

The system has “not uncovered any information that the district’s information was stolen or leaked,” Superintendent Christie Finley said in a video posted today on the school system’s website. The system has not been contacted to pay any ransom, the superintendent said, and it has made no payments.

But the system is “treating all information that was locked down as having been taken by the attacker” in an abundance of caution, the system said. Personal information that may have been exposed includes:

1. State student identification numbers for 2013, 2016 and 2020

2. Email addresses of parents linked to those ID numbers in 2020

3. Social Security numbers of school district employees between 2010 and 2020, contractors who worked for the system during the same decade and students who participated in a club called “Fantastic Four” during calendar year 2008.

“I know this isn’t the news you wanted to hear,” Finley said in a video posted today, “and it certainly is not the news I wanted to share.”

The system also offered a special temporary telephone number for parents, staff and educators to call for more information: 256-428-7773. That number will be operative Dec. 21-23 and 28-30 and Jan. 4-8. And Finley said the system is planning to reopen schools to students after the winter holiday.

In a press conference Monday afternoon, school officials said the 23,000-student system’s financial information was “not affected” by the hack. A Huntsville police inspector also said the investigation seeking those who committed the attack is “ongoing.”

Finley said system employees have worked overtime and made changes to computer systems, but she “can’t say this won’t happen again.” That is the world as it is now, Finley said, noting that the Pentagon itself was just hacked. That was a reference to last week’s federal government acknowledgment that Russian hackers had entered computer systems at the Pentagon, State Department, Treasury…

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Hackers attacking hospitals, schools as ransomware cases rise | News

December 12, 2020/in Computer Security

(CBS) — Cases of cyber ransomware are on the rise during the pandemic. Criminals are targeting hospitals and schools, with vulnerable remote learning environments. Federal officials expect that will continue through the 2021 academic year.

Teachers in Huntsville, Alabama are printing their lessons on paper after cyber criminals hit the district with a ransomware attack locking down the computer network. “It’s terrible to see a district with some motivated employees moving forward to then have one more obstacle like this,” says William Tunnell with the Alabama Education Association.

Officials are not revealing how much ransom the hackers demand, but Huntsville is far from alone. School computer systems in Baltimore County and Hartford, Connecticut were also hit this year.

Cyber security expert Scott Schober says municipalities, businesses, and even hospitals are ransomware targets. Criminals often send a fake email to employees with a link. Clicking on it downloads malware and allows the hacker into the network. “And now the cybercriminal works laterally through the computer networks to then find the target machine or machines and then encrypt the data and send them the ransom note,” says Schober.

Some ransom notes demand money to restore access to the computer network. Internet security company SonicWall says cases surged 40 percent this year. The average payment also climbed from a few thousand dollars in 2018 to more than 230-thousand dollars. Schober says, “Usually it’s done with digital currency, crypto currency, bitcoin is the preferred choice so the criminals can remain anonymous.”

Security experts say it’s vital for hospitals and every business to have a strong network backup system to thwart ransomware attacks. In October, the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security warned of coordinated cyber-attacks on the healthcare industry.

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Expert weighs in on why hackers attack schools and what usually happens

December 8, 2020/in Computer Security

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WAFF) – In recent years, cybersecurity attacks on schools have become more and more common.

graphical user interface: More information on school cyber security in Huntsville

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More information on school cyber security in Huntsville

No one knows that better than Doug Levin, he’s behind the K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center. It’s a unique database tracking cyber security threats to U.S. public schools.

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Levin began noticing cyber attacks on schools back in 2016, since then, there have been more than 1,000 threats tracked by the site.

“I’ve grown increasingly convinced that this is a problem, that we need to raise awareness about these issues,” he said.

Levin said schools are being targeted more and more now-a-days for a few reasons, he said they usually under-invest in I.T. support and security, computer systems tend to be older and out-of-date because of budget issues and most of all, schools are a need for communities.

“They offer essential services, so there isn’t a lot of tolerance in the community for them being knocked offline, meaning that there is a greater chance hackers can extort money from them,” Levin said.

As for a timetable on a return to devices, Levin said it varies on severity, but he thinks HCS may be dealing with a more severe threat since they’ve asked students and staff to shutdown all devices.

“In that case, you certainly are looking at maybe weeks before things are approaching back to normal, though it could be many months before systems are fully restored,” he said. “A lot of it depends on how the school district approaches it’s recovery efforts and whether they are able to really recover all of that information that may have been compromised.”

Even if the school system does have good backups, there is still the issue of making sure you figure out how your system was inflitrated.

“Unfortunately we’ve seen circumstances where school district have had good backups and tried to restore, but weren’t able to completely evict the malware from their system,” Levin said. “Then only to find themselves get reinfected quickly soon thereafter, so it’s definitely a complicated process.”

So far, HCS said they aren’t sure what…

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