Hackers steal personal data off San Diego School District pupils and employees

The San Diego Unified School District in California is sufferer of a phishing scam which exposed data belonging to 500,000 pupils and employees. Among those items leaked were names, addresses, Social Security Numbers (SSN) and other private credentials. The period of attack was January to November; however, information technology personnel of the school district got to know about it during October 2018 alone.

Completion of the hack followed with the attacker acquiring admission into employee credentials through a method called phishing whereby legitimate appearing e-mails get distributed diverting recipients onto phony login pages on which they submit their credentials. The e-mails are technically called phishing e-mails.

Once the attackers in the above case collected the submitted credentials they used the information for acquiring admission into confidential data comprising SSN, full names, birth dates, ID number of students, tax information, health information, home addresses, e-mail ids, salaries, phone numbers and names of financial institutions where direct deposits were being made.

According to district officials, hackers gained admission into the school district's network during January and November start of this year; however, the theft was of employee and student information of a long time back of 2008-09 academic annum. District officials dispatched an electronic mail to those impacted with the hack stating they let the hacking operation take place on purpose. The reason cited was an investigation being done while the officials were knowledgeable about the hackers' activities. At the same time the officials were informing probable victims, while one stage of the probe was complete and the remaining was continuing. www.zdnet.com posted this dated December 25, 2018.

Along with IT personnel, San Diego Unified Police seemingly identified the perpetrators behind the phishing scam, however, kept back revealing specific details right now because of the still going on investigation. The school district asked all inmates whose information might have been accessed for resetting their login particulars. The IT personnel and police reframed the hacked accounts anyway after discovering the breach, while currently in place are fresh measures for data security so any further possibility of the kind of attack occurring is minimized.

» SPAMfighter News - 12/28/2018