Tag Archive for: district

Ransomware group demands $700,000 from Tarrant Appraisal District

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Evil walks this world, and it entered the Tarrant Appraisal District building last week when hackers infiltrated the district’s network, board chairman Vince Puente told those gathered at an emergency meeting March 24.

An unknown ransomware group is demanding $700,000 from the appraisal district, after a network disruption last week took the district’s systems offline. Lindsay B. Nickle, legal counsel for the district, said they believe hacking group Medusa may be responsible for the attack.

“If they steal from (the appraisal district), they’re stealing from our taxpayers,” Puente said.

Nickle said the group claims to have sensitive information, but the district doesn’t know whether taxpayer information has actually been compromised and an investigation is ongoing. She confirmed that the district has made contact with the group responsible, and said no decisions have been made on whether to pay the ransom.

“Nobody wants to pay a ransom,” she said. “And so the investigation is ongoing, and we’re looking into all of our options to recover (information).”

The appraisal district does not know where the attack originated. An outside group has been hired to investigate the incident further, Nickle said, but declined to name them. This is the second confirmed cyberattack against the agency in recent years, the first dating back to October 2022.

Medusa has been behind a rising number of data leaks in 2023, targeting industries like education, manufacturing, health care and retail.

Medusa hacked as many as 74 organizations, mostly in Europe, in 2023.

Lindsey Nickle, legal counsel for the Tarrant Appraisal District, gives media and community members an update on the ransomware attack.

Sandra Sadek

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Fort Worth Report

Lindsey Nickle, legal counsel for the Tarrant Appraisal District, gives media and community members an update on the ransomware attack.
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Scranton School District suffered a ransomware attack

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Scranton School District in Pennsylvania suffered a ransomware attack

Pierluigi Paganini
March 16, 2024

School districts continue to be under attack, schools in Scranton, Pennsylvania, are suffering a ransomware attack.

This week, schools in Scranton, Pennsylvania, experienced a ransomware attack, resulting in IT outages. The Scranton School District is working with third-party forensic specialists to investigate the security breach and restore impacted systems.

“The attack is causing a temporary disruption to some of our computer systems and services. We are working diligently with third party forensic specialists, that we engaged last evening, to investigate the source of this incident, confirm its impact on our systems, and to restore full functionality to the system as soon as possible,” reads a post published by the Scranton School District on Facebook they wrote.  

“Scranton School District’s computer system was recently hacked and infected with ransomware, according to acting Superintendent Patrick Laffey.” reported The Time Tribune.

The district ordered school staff not to use any electronic devices and uninstall any school-related apps from their mobile devices, said Rosemary Boland, president of the Scranton Federation of Teachers.

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

The Scranton School District website is not reachable and their Facebook account is not available at the time of this writing.

The Scranton School District is a large, urban school district located in Scranton, Pennsylvania in the Wyoming Valley region. The district encompasses approximately 26 square miles. According to the 2020 census, the Scranton School District serves a resident population of 76,997.

The school district includes 15 schools and serves more than 9000 students.

The Scranton School District reported “network-related issues” on Thursday, the problems caused a disruption for computer systems and services in the District. The issues caused the school…

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Ransomware attack hamstrings three District Attorneys’ offices in NM • Source New Mexico

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A ransomware attack impacted three local prosecutors’ offices around New Mexico earlier this week.

Wednesday morning, someone ran ransomware on servers in four offices connected to the Administrative Office of the District Attorneys (AODA), including the server for the network prosecutors and public defenders use to share court records called the consolidated statewide case management system (CMS).

In interviews with Source New Mexico, a spokesperson for the First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies in Santa Fe and Ninth Judicial District Attorney Quentin Ray in Clovis said their offices were impacted by the attack.

A third prosecutor’s office, the Fifth Judicial District Attorney in Carlsbad, was also affected, according to Ray. A phone call seeking comment from Fifth DA Dianna Luce on Thursday was not returned.

Marcus Montoya, president of AODA and the elected Eighth Judicial District Attorney in Taos, said Thursday afternoon “we’re still triaging” which cases and hearings the attack impacted.

“Affected might mean different things, so how much is compromised is hard for me to say,” he said. “Maybe some districts might be a little more exposed than others, but for the most part, a majority of the data is protected and will be available.”

The attack left prosecutors unable to access the case management system, slowing their work and making it more tedious, Montoya said. Prosecutors and staff instead had to access a different server and move the files over to an external hard drive, which they carried into court, he said.

“It’s contained, and it’s ultimately not as bad as probably your traditional ransomware attack, so I think we’re in a good place,” Montoya said. 

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Ray, the DA in Clovis, said those case files include any information about people accused of crimes, evidence in their cases, and prosecutors’ own case notes.

Some hearings had to be delayed, he said, “others we were able to MacGyver around.” Between 10% and 15% of the cases his office handles…

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District attorney offices statewide affected by ransomware attack

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Mar. 14—The New Mexico Administrative Office of the District Attorneys was still trying to get its two main computer servers working again Thursday after a ransomware attack locked prosecutors across the state out of their files Wednesday morning.

“We are currently working to resolve the issue and optimistic it will be resolved sometime today,” said Henry Valdez, the agency’s director, in an interview Thursday.

He explained the cyberattack: “It comes in however it can, then encrypts your files so you can’t access them and then says you have to pay a certain amount and if you don’t they never release the encryption.”

Valdez said the two computer servers affected by the attack are in Albuquerque but serve offices in the 13 judicial districts throughout New Mexico. The Santa Fe-based server near his office has not been affected, he added.

Work at the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office, which serves Santa Fe, Rio Arriba and Los Alamos counties, was hindered by the attack, a spokesman confirmed.

“The FJDA can confirm that we are experiencing issues with our case management system, as well as other internal systems. This has resulted in an inability for our staff to work as they are normally accustomed,” spokesman Nathan Lederman wrote in an email.

“We have been informed that our computer systems have been hacked statewide,” District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies wrote in an email Wednesday to judges and others in the district.

“As such, we have no access to any files/drives/folders. Nothing,” she wrote.

“AODA is attempting to fix the situation but it appears that malware and/or ransomware has attacked the systems and this may take the rest of the week,” she added.

The Judicial Information Division Service desk sent an email to judges Thursday warning staff to use caution when opening electronic communications from the District Attorney’s Office.

“Until further notice anything we receive from the district attorney’s office, even from trusted sources, needs to be thoroughly reviewed,” the email says. “All emails from any DA email address should be carefully examined especially if it contains any sort of attachment or hyperlink that would take you to a website.”

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