Olympia Community Unified School District in Stanford, Illinois, was allegedly attacked by the LockBit ransomware group. The group posted about the Olympia Community Unified School District cyberattack on the leak site with a deadline of 6 days. Post the deadline, the group threatened to leak the school’s stolen data .
Cybersecurity researcher Dominic Alvieri shared a screenshot of the LockBit leak site along with a tweet that read, “Olympia Community Unified School District in Stanford, Illinois has been breached by LockBit.” The official website https://www.olympia.org/ was inaccessible at the time of writing.
Olympia Community Unified School District cyberattack
The Olympia Community Unified School District cyberattack post was updated on April 5. It featured the deadline of “6D 23h 40m 33s” saying that the data will be leaked nearly 6 days from the day the announcement was made.
Not much information regarding the alleged Olympia Community Unified School District cyberattack have been shared yet.
The alleged Olympia Community Unified School District cyberattack, if true, could impact over 1,722 students from 5 schools.
LockBit and its misadventures
So far, the LockBit ransomware group has targeted several educational institutes and other entities. Among the alleged targets were the South Korean National Tax Service, Verne Technologies Group, and The Ned Nomad luxury 5-star hotel.
The group even went ahead and listed over 10 companies on its leak site within 24 hours including the Government of Medellín, Columbia.
Educational Institutes Targeted
CISA issued ransomware reference material for K-12 schools and school district IT staff to help them detect and report cyberattacks.
According to reports, ransomware impacted nearly 44 U.S. universities and colleges and nearly 45 school districts targeted in 2022.
Reflecting on the staggering number of cyberattacks on various organizations, Emisoft, a cybersecurity company stated, “The reality is that nobody knows for sure whether the number of attacks is flat or trending up or down.”
Hence, CISA took the initiative to share details about webinars, fact sheets, and video conferencing for schools in battling ransomware on their end.
The reference material formed by CISA, the FBI, and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) highlighted ransomware statistics, reports, and mitigation options for reference.
Students and IT staff of schools were offered details about common attack vectors and threat landscape to prepare against increasing ransomware attacks.
Targeted entities and individuals were asked to report ransomware attacks at www.us-cert.gov/report, their local FBI field office, or the Secret Service field office.