Students at the Livingston public school district in New Jersey are undoubtedly happy for a two hour delayed opening tomorrow. Unfortunately, this delay is not being caused by snow, but rather by a ransomware attack that the district is still recovering from.
According to an email sent to parents on Friday and obtained by BleepingComputer, the New Jersey school district was affected by a ransomware attack on November 21st, 2019.
"As you know, our servers have been down since yesterday. Today, we had an outside security company do a full assessment of our systems. Based upon what they found, we can now confirm that our servers were hacked by an outside entity and infected with Ransomware, which is designed to encrypt data. We are confident that this entity is NOT associated with the Livingston Community or the Livingston Public Schools," the email explained to families in the district.
The school district has notified law enforcement and is working with a security company to investigate the attack and perform an analysis of their systems.
It has not been disclosed how the attackers gained access to the district's network or the type of ransomware that they are infected with.
The district states that most of the school's services are up and running, but that their normal phone system and their Genesis Parent Access Portal are still not accessible.
Stolen data should be considered
The Livingston school district also attempted to reassure parents that the school's data has not been stolen by the attackers.
"Our understanding is that these criminals do not typically steal data, but rather render the systems unusable"
While it is true that ransomware operators and affiliates do n ..
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