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:
- New Jersey health system agrees to pay $4.5M in data breach settlement
February 3, 2026
Capital Health, a health care provider with multiple locations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, will pay $4.5 million as part of a settlement over a 2023 data breach that compromised the private information of patients, former patients and employees. In a statement, the company said the stolen information included names, addresses, social security numbers, dates of ...
- Russian ransomware hackers allegedly hit Tulsa airport in cyberattack, dump private files online as proof
February 2, 2026
Russian ransomware operators Qilin have claimed to have broken into the Tulsa International Airport and stolen an unspecified amount of sensitive company data. A report from Cybernews says the group recently added the airport to their data leak site, and included 18 samples as proof of their claims. The researchers analyzed the samples, finding it included ...
- Oregon residents health data stolen in TriZetto breach
January 31, 2026
Thousands more Oregonians will soon receive data breach letters in the continued fallout from the TriZetto data breach, in which someone hacked the insurance verification provider and gained access to its healthcare provider customers across multiple US states. The breach occurred back in November 2024, with intruders snooping through protected health information and other sensitive personal ...
- Informant told FBI that Jeffrey Epstein had a ‘personal hacker’
January 30, 2026
A confidential informant told the FBI in 2017 that Jeffrey Epstein had a “personal hacker,” according to a document released by the Department of Justice on Friday. The document, which was released as part of the Justice Department’s legally required effort to publish documents related to its investigation into the late sex offender, does not identify ...
- Trump’s acting cyber chief uploaded sensitive files into a public version of ChatGPT
January 27, 2026
The interim head of the country’s cyber defense agency uploaded sensitive contracting documents into a public version of ChatGPT last summer, triggering multiple automated security warnings that are meant to stop the theft or unintentional disclosure of government material from federal networks, according to four Department of Homeland Security officials with knowledge of the incident. The ...
- Microsoft gave FBI a set of BitLocker encryption keys to unlock suspects’ laptops
January 23, 2026
Microsoft provided the FBI with the recovery keys to unlock encrypted data on the hard drives of three laptops as part of a federal investigation, Forbes reported on Friday. Many modern Windows computers rely on full-disk encryption, called BitLocker, which is enabled by default. This type of technology should prevent anyone except the device owner from ...
