A ransomware attack has led to the leak of personal information of students and staff at the Chicago Public Schools(CPS) and information is out that the incident which took place in December last year was revealed to the public on April 25th this year.
Investigations later launched revealed that hackers accessed data stored from the past 4 years and in the incident and that included information such as names, schools, DoBs, CPS Identification Numbers, and state student identification numbers along with class schedule information and scores of the CPS Pupils.
Coming to the employee details, names, their IDs, hackers accessed email access credentials in the file-encrypting malware attack.
About 495,398 students and 57,158 employee records belonging to the 2015-2016 and 2018-2019 school years were leaked in the attack.
All students and staff affected by the ransomware attack will be provided a year-long credit monitoring and identity theft protection service says a statement issued by Chicago Public Schools.
FBI and Homeland Security were asked to investigate the breach and discovered that none of the stolen details have been misused or sold on the dark web to date. Both the law enforcement agencies issued a joint statement that no social security numbers, insurance details, home addresses, and health data were leaked in the incident.
Battelle for Kids is the technology company that has been serving CPS for years and it is believed that a cyberattack took place on the firm’s servers affecting Chicago Public Schools, the 3rd largest school district in the United States.
The suspicion finder is currently pointing at Conti Ransomware or Lap$sus Ransomware group.
