How to avoid internet scams and getting hacked
Americans lose billions to cybercrooks. Don’t think you’re too smart to fall for their tricks.
USA TODAY
- A cyberattack on the Fall River public school system computers was discovered Monday.
- The system remains down and will likely remain down for the rest of the week.
- Superintendent Tracy Curley said the district does not have insurance to mitigate the fallout, and that the cost of data recovery will be paid out of pocket.
FALL RIVER — The city’s public school computers will be down for the rest of the week after a cybersecurity attack infiltrated the district’s internal system — and a solution may cost the School Department out of pocket.
At a joint meeting of the School Committee and City Council on Tuesday afternoon, Superintendent Tracy Curley told officials, “We will be without service for the rest of the week.”
The cyberattack was discovered Monday, leaving the district without access to email or the internet.
Curley also told city officials they do not have insurance to mitigate fallout of what happened; the cost of data recovery will need to be paid out of pocket.
“We will know more in the next couple of days, and whether there is a cost attached to getting up to fully functional again,” Curley said.
Paper lessons for students at Fall River Public Schools
Sources inside the school system say students have not been allowed to use the internet or their Chromebooks, or carry those computers into classrooms; many students have been doing lessons on paper only.
The schools’ phone lines are still operational.
Some schools in the district were meant to start MCAS testing this week — that has since been postponed.
It is unknown if the cyberattack will be resolved before the district leaves for April vacation on Thursday, April 17.
Other schools and even police have been victims of ransomware
In a statement Monday night, Curley said, “At this time, there is no evidence that any student or staff personal data was accessed or misused. If that changes, we will immediately notify anyone who has been affected.”
She also stated that law enforcement is involved in the investigation.
Curley has not specified the exact nature of the cyberattack, or how it manifested itself, or if hackers are demanding a ransom; other local school systems and government agencies have fallen victim to ransomware attacks, where data is encrypted or locked and hackers will only decrypt or unlock it if paid a ransom, usually in cryptocurrency.
It’s not the first time that network systems at local organizations have proven vulnerable to attacks from hackers, which can sometimes take weeks to resolve.
In 2013, Swansea police paid off scammers who encrypted several files in their computer system and held them for ransom, paying $750, then the value of two Bitcoins.
In 2019, the city of New Bedford suffered a major ransomware attack with criminals demanding $5.3 million in Bitcoin. The city counteroffered $400,000 from insurance proceeds; when this was rejected, the city worked with tech support to successfully recover the data.
Somerset Berkley Regional High School was hit with a ransomware attack in 2020, Newport schools were hit with malware in 2019 and Brockton police suffered a cyberattack in the summer of 2021 that knocked network systems offline.
In December 2022, Bristol Community College was the victim of a ransomware attack that affected all campuses for weeks. The next month, Swansea Public Schools shut down for a day a ransomware attack of its own.