Category Archives: massachusetts

A small school district in Massachusetts was the target of a ransomware attack last month which resulted in a $10,000 bitcoin payment to anonymous cyber extortionists.  The attack, which locked all of the Leominster Public School District’s computers, was carried out by a party demanding a payment to return the computer system to normal. Paula Deacon, the school district’s superintendent, was notified of the hack on April 14.  “They didn’t have a clean offsite backup,” said Leominster Interim Police Chief Michael Goldman in an interview with ABC News. “This happened and the school system was not locked down as they should have been.” Cybersecurity experts often recommend up-to-date, offsite backups of computer systems as the best defense against ransomware. If a ransomware target is locked out of one system, a backup would allow them to immediately move their operations to a new server and continue normally.  Leominster officials also notified […]

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