A pair of U.S. school districts were hit with two very different, but still damaging, cyberattacks in the last week.
A former Chicago Public School employee was arrested for stealing the PII on 80,000 district workers, while Gallow, N.J., the district lost $200,000 due to a wire fraud scam.
In the Windy City incident, Kristi Sims was arrested on four counts of aggravated computer tampering and three counts of identity theft. The content taken included names, employee ID numbers, phone numbers, addresses, dates of birth, criminal arrest histories and DCFS findings, according to the Sun-Times. Sims was a contract worker for the district handling administrative tasks for the school’s Office of Safety and Security.
The Sun-Times quoted Chicago police as saying Sims also allegedly deleted information from the school’s system.
The Galloway Township Public School System was victimized by two fraudulent wire transfers scams of $200,000 each. One was canceled before any money was transferred, but the remaining amount is unrecovered at this times, reported The Press of Atlantic City.
Exactly how the wire transfers were enticed out of the district was not explained, but on October 31 district Communication's officer Joanna Westcott , sent a letter, obtained by BreakingAC.com, to her employees saying the district had suffered a data breach in which worker login credentials may have been compromised. The breach forced the district to take several websites down and Westcott said work continues to eliminate the malware.
