Recently, a cyberattack wrecked havoc in a Florida Keys school district. Subsequent investigations identified it as a ransomware called GandCrab. The school’s IT operations were shut down for almost a week. Amidst the cyberthreat’s terror, Comcast had an internal issue that further delayed the restoration processes.
The victim –– Monroe County School District –– was attacked by a notorious ransomware known popularly by the name GandCrab Ransomware. GandCrab has been one of the most prominent threats in 2018. It was first found in January. After several ransomware removal processes, security experts have singled it out as the most dangerous ransomware.
The attack was first found when a school employee that worked with the payroll system was unable to process salaries. Going by the school policy, the employee used the ticketing system for the submission of a ticket to the IT department. Subsequently, the IT department forwarded the complaint to Symantec where they were advised to apply security protocols.
Pat Lefere, the district’s executive director for operations and planning, stated that even Symantec was left puzzled by the ransomware due to its sophisticated techniques. As a consequence, backup processes started along with patching and testing of systems. After ransomware removal process was applied on all the servers, they were functional again. However, same issues persisted again, and the systems had to be closed again.
Mark Porter –– district superintendent –– expressed regret over the loss of access to the school’s data. This meant that the deliverance of progress reports to students was also delayed. Due to the district’s backup strategies, the district had no plans on paying any ransom.
The school’s website is working again. However, computer systems are still being examined, and investigation for ransomware removal and recovery processes are being carried out. Lefere said that each server was configured with new settings to completely eliminate any remnants of the ransomware.
