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Big data trove dumped after LA Unified School District says no to ransomware crooks
news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 3 October, 2022 - 20:25 · 1 minute
A ransomware outfit calling itself Vice Society has dumped nearly 300,000 files belonging to the Los Angeles Unified School District as punishment for rebuffing demands it pay the group a hefty fee to recover data stolen during a recent cyber intrusion.
Ransomware operators breach targets’ networks, encrypt all their data, and then charge victims a ransom for the decryption key. More recently, the groups have moved to a double extortion model, in which they also publish the data on the dark web unless victims pay a ransom to keep it private. Already this year, 27 school districts with 1,735 schools among them have been hacked in ransomware incidents, Brett Callow, a threat analyst with security firm Emsisoft, said .
So far this year, 29 post secondary schools in the US have been hit as well as 27 districts with 1,735 schools between them. At least 37/56 incidents involved data theft. A good round-up from @lorenzofb 2/3 https://t.co/VFcPVmOjkh
— Brett Callow (@BrettCallow) October 3, 2022
The Los Angeles Unified School District is the second biggest school district in the US, behind the New York City Department of Education, making it a trophy of sorts for ransomware groups that prey on these organizations.