The Wolcott school district suffered a second ransomware attack in 4 months

DragonForce operator chained SimpleHelp flaws

Another ransomware attack hits a school district, the victim is an institute in Connecticut that was targeted twice in only four months.

For the second time in just four months, another the Wolcott school district in Connecticut was a victim of a ransomware attack. Techers and students were not able to access the district’s internal email system following the infection.

“Students and teachers went back to school without access to computers or the district’s internal email system again Monday, five days after a second malware attack targeted the district’s servers.” states the Republican American. “Superintendent Anthony Gasper said teachers are being “flexible” and continue to teach their classes without computer access.”

The ransomware attack took place on Sept. 4 when a staff member reported suspicious activity on a district computer. The ransomware infected computers connected to the Wolcott school district networks, IT staff shut down them in response to the incident.

A precedent ransomware attack took place at the end of August and blocked the operations at all five Wolcott schools.

“The district was the victim of a three-month ransomware attackthis summer that blocked all five Wolcott schools from accessing internal files, as well as staff in the central office and business office.” reported the Associated Press.

According to the superintendent Anthony Gasper, all the computers are still turned off, except for a few computers that were set up for school secretaries.

The district has hired cyber security firm Kivu to help them in the incident response and recovering operations. Unfortunately, school districts are a privileged target for crooks, other ransomware attacks made the headlines recently.

Earlier in August, for the second time in a few days, Houston County Schools in Alabama delayed the school year’s opening due to a malware attack.

In the same period, several schools of Louisiana were also targeted by hackers ahead of year’s beginning. The AP press reported that a fourth Louisiana school district, Tangipahoa Parish, is assessing damages caused by a cyberattack that its computer network.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – ransomware attack, Wolcott)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.