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:
- White House picks new chief to oversee cyber-weapons group
June 22, 2018
The White House has a new leader of a largely secretive government group that decides whether software and hardware vulnerabilities should be withheld from the public to help the government conduct cyber operations. Grand Schneider, the federal chief information security officer and senior director at the National Security Council, was named head of the Vulnerabilities Equities Process (VEP) ...
- GDPR: US news sites blocked to EU users over data protection rules
May 25, 2018
A number of high-profile US news websites are temporarily unavailable in Europe after new European Union rules on data protection came into effect. The Chicago Tribune and LA Times were among those posting messages saying they were currently unavailable in most European countries. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) gives EU citizens more rights over how their ...
- U.S. raises concerns about Vietnam’s proposed cybersecurity law
May 24, 2018
The United States has raised concerns with Vietnam about its proposed cybersecurity law, the U.S. Embassy said on Thursday, amid activists’ fears the new legislation will cause economic harm and crackdown on online dissent in the communist-ruled country. The concerns were conveyed by Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Jeffrey Gerrish in a meeting with Vietnam’s Deputy Prime ...
- Revealed: Pentagon Push to Hack Nuke Missiles Before They Launch
May 22, 2018
The Pentagon has embraced a controversial policy of destroying enemy nuclear missiles before they launch, an internal policy document from May 2017 shows. It’s an effort that appears to include executing cyberattacks against missile control systems or components. The Pentagon document does not name adversaries. But experts who reviewed it for The Daily Beast considered it ...
- A Lack Of Cybersecurity Funding And Expertise Threatens U.S. Infrastructure
April 23, 2018
As our physical infrastructure becomes increasingly digitalized, it also becomes increasingly vulnerable to cyber attack. Russian hackers, for example, have been trying to compromise U.S. electrical infrastructure for years, and successfully cut off power to hundreds of thousands of people throughout Ukraine in 2015 and again in 2016. Beyond our energy infrastructure, traffic signals are also susceptible to being hijacked, ...
- US, UK cyber cops warn Russians are rooting around in your routers
April 16, 2018
American and British crimefighters have launched another round of pin-the-tail-on-the-Russians – with a warning that Moscow-backed hackers are trying to subvert the world’s network devices. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) on Monday issued a joint Technical Alert describing a global assault ...