The Baltimore City School District was hit by a ransomware attack on November 25, knocking out its affected network systems . The Baltimore City School District operates all public schools in Baltimore County, Maryland, and is the 25th largest school system in the United States .
Mychael Dickerson, the district's chief of staff, confirmed that the attack affected the school district's offices, website, email system, and grading system. The district also had to suspend online classes and close its offices after the ransomware attack hit its systems.
Mychael Dickerson also said in his statement that Baltimore Public Schools had to close on Wednesday, November 25, 2020, due to network issues. He added that Baltimore County Public Schools can confirm the ransomware attack, which caused an outage of IT systems. Dickerson also stressed that the BCPS technology team is currently working to address the situation and restore systems.
As BleepingComputer reports, depending on the ransomware gang that encrypted the school district's systems, this attack could also lead to a breach if employee and student information is stolen from computers .
Currently, more than 20 ransomware operations are stealing sensitive documents from their victims' servers before encrypting network systems.
The Baltimore Public Schools district also posted a notice on its website urging students to use only district-issued devices for online learning. Specifically, the notice noted:
“Students participating in online learning should only use laptops or devices provided by their school. Do not use your personal laptop or desktop.”
Baltimore County told WMAR that it has found no evidence so far to suggest that government systems were compromised in the ransomware attack. In May 2019, Baltimore City Hall was attacked by RobbinHood ransomware, which encrypted its data. At the time, the city had to shut down most of servers to prevent the malware from spreading and encrypting other systems.
