Submitted via IRC for AzumaHazuki
Back to school: With latest attack, ransomware cancels classes in Flagstaff
As students returned to school across the country over the past two weeks, school districts are facing an unprecedented wave of ransomware attacks. In the past month, dozens of districts nationwide have been affected by ransomware attacks, in some cases taking entire school systems' networks down in the process.
All classes were cancelled September 5 at Flagstaff Unified School District schools in Arizona after the discovery of a ransomware attack against the district's servers on Wednesday, September 4. All Internet services were taken down by the school district's information technology team at about 3pm local time on Wednesday, when the ransomware was discovered during what district officials said was routine maintenance.
"We have had to break the connection from the Internet to our school sites while we work with Internet security experts to contain and mitigate the issue," FUSD spokesman Zachery Fountain said in a statement to press. No further details on the ransomware were released, and district officials are not sure whether any personal identifying information has been exposed.
More than 70 state and local government agencies have been hit with ransomware so far this year. This steady drumbeat of ransomware attacks against state and local government agencies, including school districts, has not gone unnoticed by citizens. People are increasingly concerned about the damage being done by ransomware. In a recent survey of 2,200 citizens conducted by Morning Consult on behalf of IBM Security, 75% of those surveyed across the United States acknowledged that they are worried about ransomware attacks on cities. And 60% said that cities should not pay the ransom for attacks when they fall victim; instead, they'd prefer focusing such spending on recovery costs.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Saturday September 07 2019, @10:22AM (1 child)
Don't blame the administrator. It's a bit hard in this day and age when everything business-based is now in the cloud -- word processing, calendars, chat programs, schedules for nose-picking lessons, etc. And bosses and colleagues demand databases and servers should be in the cloud despite warnings from the administrator. And all applications being developed and used must be web-based. And password requirements be damned. It's obvious we don't need passwords to be longer than three characters despite repeated warnings from the administrator. But by this point, the administrator is obviously over-reacting and should be completely ignored.
Ahem. Not that I'm speaking from any kind of personal experience. *Cough*
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 07 2019, @01:32PM
Got ya - I'm empathizing. But, my "administrator" is the school administrator, not the network administrator. Any sys-admin worth talking to knows better. Any sys-admin who doesn't know better isn't worth the pink slip used to fire his ass.