A Massachusetts school district was affected by a ransomware attack on 27th April . A ransom of $10,000 worth of Bitcoin was paid to the hackers and they are currently waiting for their system to be unlocked.
Interim Leominster Police Chief Michael Goldman said that despite the nefarious nature of the school system’s lockdown, there is no investigation going on for this cyber-crime because solving this attack is “impossible,”
He further added saying, “It’s something likely to come from out of the country, (we) can’t trace it,”
The police chief claims that he was not told what kind of files were locked down. He said that this was “straight up decryption” and not data mining. The school employees were locked out of their own system as well.
He even said that, “The school e-mail system is also down, and school employees are using their Gmail accounts to communicate with one another.”
Leominster Schools Superintendent Paula Deacon said in a statement that the school district is waiting to have their systems “be fully restored.”
She added saying, “The Leominster Public Schools were the victim of a Ransomware cyber-attack on Saturday, April 14, 2018. A lock was placed on our system until a negotiated ransom was agreed upon. We paid through a bitcoin system and are now awaiting to be fully restored.”
Bitcoin is digital money or crypto currency. According to Bitcoin.org, “It is powered by its users with no central authority or middlemen.”
The site also states, “From a user perspective, Bitcoin is pretty much like cash for the Internet.”
The police chief, Goldman claims that Deacon asked him for advice on this ransom ware and he advised her to pay the $10,000 bitcoin ransom.
Finally Goldman adds, “There were some negotiations between the district and the hackers, and when the school system agreed to pay the ransom they were sent passwords to unlock certain files, as proof that the cyber extortionists could unlock the files.”
