Florida School Districts Found Vulnerable to Hacks

In September 2016, prior to the election of president in USA, global hackers infiltrated PC-networks belonging to a minimum of 4 school districts in Florida intending to filch innumerable students' personal data.

Upon investigation, the cyber-security firm United Data Technologies based in Doral found that the computers were tainted with malware, which disabled the logs, thus obliterating the person's identity accessing those PCs. The hackers spent 3 months to probe the PCs, detecting their locations and verifying what security systems were in place. Once they even put up onto the websites of 2 school districts somebody's photograph in ISIS fighter costume.

UDT unearthed that the hackers weren't simply hunting the students' names along with their Social Security Numbers. They were as well seeking a method for infiltrating other sensitive networks of government departments such as the state voting devices. Miamiherald.com posted this, June 18, 2017.

UDT says the hackers effectively managed phishing employees at school districts cited above and duped them into viewing a picture file within e-mail that let the malware infection onto the computers. Moreover, a likewise assault was targeted on a Florida city PC-network, name not disclosed.

According to UDT analysts, disabling the logs during the attack really made it difficult for them to figure out in a definite manner everything that the hackers did during their assault. The tactic of disabling the logs has been described an advanced maneuver which UDT hadn't ever observed earlier.

UDT asserts the attackers sought other things too besides the students' names and SSNs for, on drawing the networks' mapping it showed the networks had certain linkages with various city and county computers. Reportedly, belonging to Morocco, the hackers apparently sought certain backdoor for gaining admission into other government PCs.

Spreading general security awareness among each and every school district appears to be a wise action ever since one other phishing attack inside Florida led to the theft of financial data belonging to over 7,000 employees of the Manatee County School District. An employee of that school district got one e-mail that seemed as the superintendent's message thus getting him to give away the district workforce's W2s.

» SPAMfighter News - 6/22/2017