Forsyth Schools Hacked
Forsyth Public Schools, located in Montana was the victim of a major hack over the weekend. They are uncertain when the hack began, but was identified on Saturday, April 1, 2017. According to Last Best News, the school received three emails prior to the attack, saying they had to pay a ransom demand, or the hackers would overrun their servers and take their data.
This is not your typical ransomware attack. In most instances, the ransomware strikes, locking the victim’s data, then a ransom demand is made. In this case, it was backwards. According to the school’s superintendent, Dinny Bennet, the student management systems have been restored, and no student data was lost. However, the teachers were not so lucky. Bennet reports,
“Most of their information—lesson plans, schedules and the like—was in the form of publicly available formats like Word and PowerPoint and stored on the district’s server. The district’s IT person is still working to recover the teachers’ files, so there’s still hope, but not that much.”
The timing of the attack was impeccable. The quarter just ended, so final grades were expected to go out on April 4, 2017. That has since been delayed a day due to the ransomware attack.
Other Ransomware Attacks
To see a full list of ransomware attacks that have taken place in 2017, you can click here. We have also created a ransomware map, see below, of the ransomware attacks that have taken place in the U.S.
