Scranton School District in Pennsylvania Faces Ransomware Attack

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Schools in Scranton, Pennsylvania, are facing a ransomware attack, the district confirmed in a message to students Friday.

On Facebook, the Scranton school district warned that it was experiencing widespread technology outages following the attack.

“The attack causes a temporary disruption to some of our IT systems and services. We are working diligently with third-party forensic specialists, whom we hired last night, to investigate the source of this incident, confirm its impact on our systems, and restore full system functionality as soon as possible,” they said. wrote.

“As you know, some files may be inaccessible during this period while we and third-party forensic specialists continue the investigation. Due to increased security measures in our systems, some functions may be slower than usual.

The school district – which serves about 10,000 students in 15 different schools – first informed students of the problems on Thursday, when it said students must arrive at school two hours later than usual.

Acting Superintendent Patrick Laffey confirmed the ransomware attack in an interview with the Times-Tribune.

Students told the newspaper they were forced to do homework with paper and pencil, unlike their usual Chromebooks.

Brett Callow, a threat analyst at Emsisoft who tracks ransomware attacks against local governments and schools, said The attack on Scranton is at least the 21st confirmed ransomware attack against a K-12 school district in 2024.

New Jersey schools and other states have already been forced to cancel classes in January after a cyberattack, and dozens of schools data theft reported earlier this year following attacks over the holiday period. Six California school districts announcement this week, they were forced to pay thousands of dollars to resolve incidents that occurred over the past three years.

Last year, Emsisoft follow up at least 108 ransomware attacks against K-12 school districts.

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