The Yorktown and Croton-Harmon school communities in Westchester County recently fell victim to a data breach when a malicious actor infected the schools' systems with ransomware
The Yorktown school was forced to temporarily shift from its hybrid learning model to remote classes after news broke that the community had been breached on October 12.
According to researcher Ron Hattar, the hacker encrypted files on the networks , forcing school administrators to restore systems one by one, using backups.
However, another school in the Westchester was attacked by cybercriminals on desktop and laptop computers that students were using at home to take lessons at home.
It's Croton-Harmon. In a message to parents and students, Croton-Harmon Principal Deborah O'Connellsaid the incident was a ransomware attack. This type of data breach prevents an organization from accessing data in order to demand ransom.
O'Connell explained that the school community "never considered" paying the ransom, "as they were able to restore their systems from backups.".
Yorktown CEO Ron Hattar did not specify what type of cyberattack the community suffered, but said it was difficult to deal with. “The impact of this attack on our systems requires a significant amount of time to restore servers and devices,” Hattar said in an email Wednesday. Yorktown also did not pay the ransom demanded.
Both inspectors said there was no evidence that personal data of students and staff was compromised. Only laptops and computer workstations were affected, not Chromebooks and iPads.
Ransomware attacks are becoming increasingly common against school complexes, as they are a relatively easy target and contain a lot of information that can be exploited by malicious actors. For this reason, it is important for school communities to follow all necessary procedures to protect their files and to be constantly vigilant.
