(VitalNews.org) – Experienced criminals are targeting schools across the United States with cyberattacks. This has been an increasing scenario and many students and families have already been affected.
The nonprofit K12 Security Information Exchange, or K12 SIX, protects schools from the threat of cyberattacks. They have said that there have been hundreds of ransomware attacks over the last ten or so years.
From April 2016 to November 2022, they were able to identify more than three hundred ransomware attacks on school districts. There have been over twenty attacks that have occurred in school districts in just the first half of this year.
The second-largest school district in Arizona had a pre-dawn ransomware attack that left the Tucson Unified School District heavily affected. The district’s executive director of technology services, Rabih Hamadeh, said, “It was completely dark and blank because everything was down.”
He said that shortly after the attack started, every single printer in the district was printing out ransom notes. The attackers called themselves the “Royal” cyber gang and they had encrypted and copied critical data, while threatening to publish it publicly.
Stacy Gosik is a mother of three sons in the district and spoke on the terrifying realization that her children’s information could be compromised.
She said, “Everything on my children — their doctor’s information, bus stop information, medical records, where we live — was in the hands of criminals,” and added, “It’s terrifying.”
Tucson Unified School District didn’t pay up the ransom but the schools were closed for two weeks as the team worked hard to repair their system. An investigation was quickly announced and the results found that private student information and employee information were leaked to the dark web where it could be sold to bidders.
This has been a common occurrence for many school and ransomware attacks have been the most used attack strategies compared to any others.
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