Colleges and K-12 schools in several states are dealing with ransomware incidents causing outages and leaking sensitive data - a continuation of a trend that has affected campuses nationwide throughout the year.
Henry County Schools - a district an hour from Atlanta with dozens of elementary, middle and high schools with more than 44,000 students - told Recorded Future News that it discovered suspicious activity impacting its network operations during the first week of November.
A spokesperson shared a link to a county landing page where Superintendent Mary Elizabeth Davis has been providing frequent updates since November 9.
In the latest update posted last Thursday, Davis said the county is still coordinating with the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Georgia Emergency Management Agency.
End of semester testing resumed with minor changes and students were able to access Chromebooks for the first time in days last week.
On Tuesday, the BlackSuit ransomware gang posted the school to its leak site.
The group is alleged to be a rebrand of the Royal ransomware gang, which caused severe damage to the city of Dallas during an attack this summer.
Ransomware gangs have stepped up their attacks on K-12 schools and colleges as the holiday season approaches.
A local news outlet in Bangor, Maine reported on Tuesday that Hermon School Department was also attacked by ransomware actors in early November.
The school is unsure of what data was accessed but said it declined to pay a ransom.
Incident responders at the cybersecurity company Rapid7 warned of hackers connected to HelloKitty ransomware exploiting the vulnerability - classified as CVE-2023-46604.
In addition to K-12 attacks, colleges continue to face barrages of attacks that often take months to fully identify.
An investigation completed on November 16 found that files were accessed from February 26 to May 18.
The data included personal information, financial account numbers and card numbers, including PIN numbers.
Allan Liska, a threat intelligence analyst at Recorded Future, said overall he has tracked 246 ransomware attacks on K-12 schools, colleges and universities in 2023, up from 189 attacks last year.
The Record is an editorially independent unit of Recorded Future.
North Korean hackers stole anti-aircraft system data from South Korean firm.
Jonathan has worked across the globe as a journalist since 2014.
Before moving back to New York City, he worked for news outlets in South Africa, Jordan and Cambodia.
He previously covered cybersecurity at ZDNet and TechRepublic.
This Cyber News was published on therecord.media. Publication date: Wed, 06 Dec 2023 22:05:08 +0000