Ransomware Gangs Exposing Private Files of Students Online

Ransomware groups have lately been dumping private documents acquired from schools online. The stolen content included happens to be raw, intimate and graphic. The confidential ‘data’ leaked online involve content as explicit as describing student sexual assaults, psychiatric hospitalizations, abusive parents, truancy, or even suicide attempts.

One hacked file shows a youngster pleading, “Please do something,” recalling the pain of frequently running into an ex-abuser at a Minneapolis school, while other described some victims wetting their bed or crying themselves to sleep.

More than 300,000 files were posted online in March after the 36,000-student Minneapolis Public Schools refused to pay a $1 million ransom. Among those files were complete sexual assault case folios including this information. Medical records, complaints of discrimination, Social Security numbers, and contact information for district employees were among the other data disclosed.

The ‘nation’s schools’ that are lush with data have been a primary target for hackers. “In this case, everybody has a key,” says Ian Coldwater, a cybersecurity expert whose son attends a Minneapolis high school.

Districts – often short of funds – are also short of resources to defend themselves from or even properly respond when attacked, as months after the attack, the Minneapolis administrators did not yet promise to inform about the attack to individual victims.

Families of six students whose sexual case files were leaked reached

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This article has been indexed from CySecurity News – Latest Information Security and Hacking Incidents