Des Moines Public Schools , Iowa's largest school district , announced that a ransomware incident was responsible for the shutdown of all of its networked systems on January 9, 2023.
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Although the school district received a ransom demand after being attacked by an anonymous ransomware group, it has yet to pay the ransom. Nearly 6,700 people affected by the breach will receive details about their personal data that was exposed this week.
“The cyberattack against DMPS included a ransom demand. No ransom has been or will be paid in response to this attack based on the advice of our cybersecurity experts and in the best interest of the school district and the community,” said .
“As a precautionary measure, free credit monitoring services are being offered to potentially affected individuals. The letter also includes information for recipients on how they can place a fraud alert on their credit file, freeze security on their credit file, and obtain a free credit report.“
See also: Jefferson County schools still offline after ransomware attack
Due to the ransomware incident that occurred in January, the school district canceled all classes starting January 10 for several days. During the investigation of the incident, Internet and network services were offline.
The system has more than 5,000 employees and over 31,000 students and spans the age range from preschool to high school with more than 60 schools.
In Iowa, several school districts, including Cedar Rapids, Davenport and Linn-Mar, were hit by ransomware last year, according to a report by the Des Moines Register. Recently, Brett Callow, a threat analyst at Emsisoft, reported that ransomware groups have attacked at least 37 K-12 school districts in the United States since the beginning of the year.
Emsisoft reports that 89 ransomware attacks were carried out on education organizations in the U.S. in 2022. Of these, 44 attacks targeted universities and colleges, while 45 attacks targeted school districts. In at least 58 of these incidents, the attackers also managed to infiltrate the victims’ networks and steal their data.
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Attacks on educational institutions have significantly impacted their daily lives, leading to class cancellations, exam interruptions, and restrictions on access to data and networks. In addition, attackers have compromised the personal information of students and school staff.
