Threat actors have deployed separate cyberattacks against Maine and Tennessee school districts during the holiday season, reports The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.
Maine's South Portland Public Schools had its network shut down on Sunday following a weekend intrusion against its firewall that was discovered to have been facilitated by a Bulgarian IP address. "After having our vendor partners analyze the access logs and activities on the network, we believe that no student data or staff was compromised — but it certainly was disruptive and stressful," said South Portland School Department Director of Technology Andrew Wallace, who noted that systems have been restored before classes resumed on Monday. On the other hand, Tennessee's Rutherford County Schools disclosed having some of its employees' personal details compromised in a Thanksgiving attack that has been causing continuous network and systems interruptions. Such attacks come as the Biden administration advanced various initiatives to bolster K-12 schools' defenses against increasingly prevalent and sophisticated cyberattacks.
