Category Archives: schools

Reducing ransomware recovery costs in education

Posted on by

2024 continued the trend of ransomware attacks in the education sector making headlines. The year opened with Freehold Township School District in New Jersey canceling classes due to a ransomware attack. Students at New Mexico Highlands University missed classes for several days while employees experienced disruption of their paychecks after a ransomware attack. The attack on […]

The post Reducing ransomware recovery costs in education appeared first on Security Intelligence.

Continue reading Reducing ransomware recovery costs in education→

One-Third of UK Teachers Lack Cybersecurity Training, While 34% Experience Security Incidents

Posted on by

A third of U.K. teachers have not received cyber security training this year, and only two-thirds of those that did deemed it useful, according to a government poll. Continue reading One-Third of UK Teachers Lack Cybersecurity Training, While 34% Experience Security Incidents→

Hacking the High School Grading System

Posted on by

Interesting New York Times article about high-school students hacking the grading system.

What’s not helping? The policies many school districts are adopting that make it nearly impossible for low-performing students to fail—they have a grading floor under them, they know it, and that allows them to game the system.

Several teachers whom I spoke with or who responded to my questionnaire mentioned policies stating that students cannot get lower than a 50 percent on any assignment, even if the work was never done, in some cases. A teacher from Chapel Hill, N.C., who filled in the questionnaire’s “name” field with “No, no, no,” said the 50 percent floor and “NO attendance enforcement” leads to a scenario where “we get students who skip over 100 days, have a 50 percent, complete a couple of assignments to tip over into 59.5 percent and then pass.”…

Continue reading Hacking the High School Grading System→

High-School Graduation Prank Hack

Posted on by

This is a fun story, detailing the hack a group of high school students perpetrated against an Illinois school district, hacking 500 screens across a bunch of schools.

During the process, the group broke into the school’s IT systems; repurposed software used to monitor students’ computers; discovered a new vulnerability (and reported it); wrote their own scripts; secretly tested their system at night; and managed to avoid detection in the school’s network. Many of the techniques were not sophisticated, but they were pretty much all illegal…

Continue reading High-School Graduation Prank Hack→

US Schools Are Buying Cell Phone Unlocking Systems

Posted on by

Gizmodo is reporting that schools in the US are buying equipment to unlock cell phones from companies like Cellebrite:

Gizmodo has reviewed similar accounting documents from eight school districts, seven of which are in Texas, showing that administrators paid as much $11,582 for the controversial surveillance technology. Known as mobile device forensic tools (MDFTs), this type of tech is able to siphon text messages, photos, and application data from student’s devices. Together, the districts encompass hundreds of schools, potentially exposing hundreds of thousands of students to invasive cell phone searches. …

Continue reading US Schools Are Buying Cell Phone Unlocking Systems→

Feds: K-12 Cyberattacks Dramatically on the Rise

Posted on by

Attackers are targeting students and faculty alike with malware, phishing, DDoS, Zoom bombs and more, the FBI and CISA said. Continue reading Feds: K-12 Cyberattacks Dramatically on the Rise→