"Give me 500 BTC or your girls' volleyball season schedule gets deleted"

[calme]

whoa, this is wild. probably russians
http://www.nj.com/gloucester-county/index.ssf/2015/03/school_district_bitcoin_hostage_situation_continue.html

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[icanscript]

have they tried turning it off and on again?

[bitspill]

have they tried turning it off and on again?

Not sure that would help in this situation

[howzar]

Would the school even be able to afford $124,000 to get their network back up? It would cost them less getting a whole new infrastructure. But of course, a lot of time would be needed to get it setup and the worst timing with exams up coming.
Probably some lousy teen trying to make a (huge) quick buck.

[calme]

if that kid gets suspended during exam week, he could have to redo the entire semester. 

[Lorenzo]

Sounds like a variant of CryptoLocker.

The district has restored encrypted files and its servers are in the process of being restored to remove any trace of the malware -- known as ransomware -- and the email and other systems are being restored, a post on the district's website reads.

"Ransomware is distributed via spam email attachments, applications that are contaminated, or websites that are hacked by criminals," the post says. "Once discovered, the district took steps to contain the infection and began the process of cleansing and rebuilding."

Student data is not expected to have been affected at this point, according to Van Zoeren.

So is the data backed up or not? If it is backed up, then simply restoring the files should be pretty trivial. If it isn't backed up and the files in question are actually encrypted, then they would be powerless to do anything about it other than paying the ransom or doing a complete reformat.

And the fact that the ransomware asked for 500 BTC makes it sound like the attack was specially targeted against the school district. Typical examples of ransomware ask for amounts much smaller than that.

On a final note, I highly doubt that it will be possible to catch the person responsible since it's likely that they were hiding behind Tor.

[BitcoinDistributor]

In all seriousness, what random school district would have $125,000 to pay a ransom? Over half of states can't even afford giving the typical 3% cost of living raise a year. I know in my state, teachers haven't gotten a raise in a couple years now.

[calme]

they might have to send some hostages over for $125k worth of slave labor. imagine the next headline: "new jersey school district sells children into slavery for btc."

[King Karma]

In all seriousness, what random school district would have $125,000 to pay a ransom? Over half of states can't even afford giving the typical 3% cost of living raise a year. I know in my state, teachers haven't gotten a raise in a couple years now.

Yeah kinda silly asking for this much. I could understand maybe a few thousand and they'd have more chance of getting some money out of them then as it would likely just be easier to pay up.

So is the data backed up or not? If it is backed up, then simply restoring the files should be pretty trivial. If it isn't backed up and the files in question are actually encrypted, then they would be powerless to do anything about it other than paying the ransom or doing a complete reformat.

It's very likely they did have backups. I think most half decent schools or universities will have a good enough IT department to know to back up their files. There's a lot of valuable info that could get lost if they didn't.

[freedomno1]

whoa, this is wild. probably russians
http://www.nj.com/gloucester-county/index.ssf/2015/03/school_district_bitcoin_hostage_situation_continue.html

Ah that has to be the classic example of overcharging for something that's just not worth it, well in the sense you can replicate the data elsewhere for the most part good to see the government intervening though with the data recovery.
I wonder if they tried a linux boot or developed upgrades to combat it over the year its been in the wild

[Lorenzo]

So is the data backed up or not? If it is backed up, then simply restoring the files should be pretty trivial. If it isn't backed up and the files in question are actually encrypted, then they would be powerless to do anything about it other than paying the ransom or doing a complete reformat.

It's very likely they did have backups. I think most half decent schools or universities will have a good enough IT department to know to back up their files. There's a lot of valuable info that could get lost if they didn't.

If they did have backups then this is really a non-issue and a minor inconvenience at most since they should be able to simply restore everything pretty easily unless their backups happened to be weeks old or corrupted. The article says that the computers are still compromised and that they were forced to postpone their exams due to this which would be odd if they did indeed have backups.

I once had a network compromised by a virus which managed to get past the firewall. Fortunately, I had a backup that was only a few hours old and after a virus scan and a quick reformat, I was able to have the network back up and running in a couple of hours. It wasn't CryptoLocker but it worked in pretty much the same way. It was really a non-issue.

[commandrix]

I'd say there's a slim chance that some whiz kid just didn't want to take the exams, and he figured he might take a crack at possibly netting some Bitcoin while he was at it. Too bad he asked for more than it likely cost the school to get rid of the virus.

[countryfree]

This comes from a kid. An adult would know a school doesn't have that kind of money around.

[AtheistAKASaneBrain]

Not gonna lie I laughed at this. I imagine the scene and it would be kinda hilarious. Just seemed incredibly funny that this happened right around the time they administer the test and everything.

[CrackedLogic]

and being forced to postpone the PARCC exams

I feel as if this has been purposefully done by a student in the school who claims to not have realized to what he has done. Just to get more time to prepare for his exam(s). There are tons of students like that, believe me.

I read on further and I found this which upset me;

they received a ransom message asking for 500 bitcoins -- an online currency popular in underground markets.

Although that statement is true, they decided to change the perspective of others who are new to bitcoin by making it seem as if it's used for criminal/ illegal activities.
I would be a lot better if they described it as an "innovative p2p payment system", or a "low fee currency". Right now, If I were to show this to a parent from the school who isn't very tech smart, I doubt they'll think any good of it.

This comes from a kid. An adult would know a school doesn't have that kind of money around.

I beg to differ. At my school's current budget, I'd say this is only 12%-15% of what they're actually looking to spend for this year.[as of current rate]

[HI-TEC99]

The story reminds me of this cartoon.

[MegaFall]

This comes from a kid. An adult would know a school doesn't have that kind of money around.

I doubt it, this an elementary school. The oldest kid in this district is probably no more than 11, 12 tops. I couldn't see somebody that young knowing what the hell they're doing when it comes to implanting a virus on an entire network.

[freedomno1]

This comes from a kid. An adult would know a school doesn't have that kind of money around.

I doubt it, this an elementary school. The oldest kid in this district is probably no more than 11, 12 tops. I couldn't see somebody that young knowing what the hell they're doing when it comes to implanting a virus on an entire network.

Well there used to be whiz kids in the 1990s
If they are a new generation of hackers then we need to give them props and a job
(They can start young )

[DarkHyudrA]

"an online currency popular in underground markets"
This is pretty wrong, Bitcoin is probably more used on the common market than the "underground" market.

And I loved that commentary:
"Maybe they could use scantrons in the meantime.  They're more difficult to hack."

Theres no real need for all the computers but oh well

[NUFCrichard]

Is there a payment deadline, if not, the way the price is going, it might be quite reasonable soon!

More seriously, it's bad press for bitcoin in almost all ways, it is associated with crime and volatility, both bad for long term growth.

I agree that it was probably a student, they have no idea how much money schools have - it kind of reminds me of Austin Powers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTmXHvGZiSY

[bryant.coleman]

lol..... the FBI went ballistic a few months earlier, saying that they had shutdown the Crypto-locker completely. Seems like some of the guys behind that trojan created another one in no time. Proves once more that Russian hackers are much more intelligent than the old farts of FBI.

[MegaFall]

Proves once more that Russian hackers are much more intelligent than the old farts of FBI.

You mean the same FBI that served a search warrant on a hosting company for a clients server and then preceded to take all the servers in the enclosure/rack because they thought that "server" meant the entire enclosure?

[countryfree]

This comes from a kid. An adult would know a school doesn't have that kind of money around.

I doubt it, this an elementary school. The oldest kid in this district is probably no more than 11, 12 tops. I couldn't see somebody that young knowing what the hell they're doing when it comes to implanting a virus on an entire network.

Hadn't noticed this was an elementary school. Well, maybe the older brother of some pupil...

[Kprawn]

It was most probably a variant of the CryptoLocker  Most Anti-virus companies already have a solution for it } -->  http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2013-091122-3112-99&tabid=3

You have to be stupid if you target soft targets like schools.. people get VERY emmotional when kids are involved and the response to this is mostly severe. In this case the FBI was brought in and it created a media circus.

You paint a target on your back, when you do things like that. This sounds like a Script kiddie prank gone wrong. If you learn anything from this.... it has to be .....Make regular backups. 

[Snail2]

Well, the person who did this surely has no idea about the funding of schools.