Imagine a criminal gaining unrestricted access to your child’s most private information — medical records, Social Security numbers and even details about their daily bus ride to school. This alarming scenario is becoming a reality for a growing number of families as sophisticated cybercriminals increasingly target schools across the United States, holding their computer systems and private data hostage.
Data gathered by K12 Security Information Exchange, known as K12 SIX, a nonprofit focused on protecting schools from cybersecurity threats, and analyzed by CBS News, shows that there have been hundreds of ransomware attacks on districts since 2016.
Read more…
Source: CBS News
Related:
- Australia, UK, and US form trilateral pact focused on security in Indo-Pacific
September 15, 2021
Australia, the UK, and the US are setting up a trilateral partnership aimed at addressing defence and security concerns in the Indo-Pacific region. The security partnership, called AUKUS, will look to promote deeper information and technology sharing between the three governments, with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison saying the new security partnership would enhance existing networks ...
- Ukrainian man extradited to the US to face botnet, data theft charges
September 10, 2021
A Ukrainian man was arrested in Poland and extradited to the US to face charges as an alleged botnet operator. The US Department of Justice (DoJ) said this week that Glib Oleksandr Ivanov-Tolpintsev was taken into custody in Korczowa, Poland, on October 3 last year. As the US and Poland have an extradition treaty, the 28-year-old was ...
- Virginia National Guard confirms cyberattack hit Virginia Defense Force email accounts
September 9, 2021
Email accounts connected to the Virginia Defense Force and the Virginia Department of Military Affairs were impacted by a cyberattack in July, according to a spokesperson from the Virginia National Guard. A. A. Puryear, chief of public affairs for the Virginia National Guard, told ZDNet that the organization was notified in July about a possible cyber ...
- Ransomware Awareness for Holidays and Weekends
August 31, 2021
CISA and the FBI have released an advisory warning of potential cyberattacks that may occur over the coming Labor Day weekend, noting that in recent years hackers have launched dozens of devastating attacks on long weekends. They urged organizations to take steps to secure their systems, reduce their exposure and potentially “engage in preemptive threat hunting ...
- Biden to host summit with tech moguls on combating cyberattacks
August 25, 2021
United States President Joe Biden is set to host leaders from the country’s largest technology and finance firms at the White House on Wednesday to discuss how to shore up their cybersecurity defences in the face of increasingly complex attacks. The meeting with top executives comes as Congress considers legislation regarding data-breach notification laws and cybersecurity ...
- FBI: OnePercent Group Ransomware targeted US orgs since Nov 2020
August 23, 2021
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has shared info about a threat actor known as OnePercent Group that has been actively targeting US organizations since at least November 2020 as a ransomware affiliate. The US federal law enforcement agency shared indicators of compromise, tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP), and mitigation measures in a flash alert published ...