A file-encrypting malware attack is said to have led to the extension of winter holidays for pupils studying in Richmond Community Schools. And authorities say that the services will be brought back to restoration by the end of next week and so the Christmas holiday break might get an extension for a week or so from the due date of January 3rd, 2020.
According to the announcement made by the K-12 School District in Michigan, the ransomware attack led to the disruption of critical systems which include heating equipment, telephone lines, printers and the technology connecting the classrooms.
However, Brian Walmsley, the Superintendent at the Richmond Community Schools has assured that no school or staff data was compromised in the malware attack as the file-encrypting malware only managed to disrupt some of the district servers.
A source adds that the hackers were demanding $10,000 in Crypto Currency to free up the servers from the ransomware. However, the school authorities have other plans such as restoring data from the data backups and setting up a new firewall.
None of the school officials were available on phone or email as they are busy restoring the services to normalcy at the earliest.
A recent security report from Emisoft says that over 768 healthcare organizations, 112 state and local agencies, 89 colleges were hit by ransomware last year. And 97% of attacks were of just file-encrypting variant, while the rest happened to be of a data-stealing variant as well- where hackers first infiltrate a network, steal data and then encrypt it with an algorithm.
