- Los Angeles Unified School District announced that they denied paying the ransom stating that the money must be used to fund students and education only.
- Shortly after the Los Angeles Unified School District’s announcement, the Vice Society gang released 500 GB of stolen data.
- The data includes sensitive personal information, such as social security numbers, confidential psychological assessments of students, contract and legal documents.
Alberto M. Carvalho from LAUSD officially confirmed that the stolen data is released online by hackers. The organization launched a hotline to help parents and students with the incident. On the 30th of September, LAUSD announced that the organization won’t pay the ransom to hackers and the money must be used to fund students and education. The organization also stated that paying the ransom doesn’t guarantee the full recovery of data.
500 GB of data
Shortly after LAUSD’s announcement, the Vice Society gang released the stolen data on its website with a message that says “CISA waster our time, we waste CISA reputation.” According to law enforcement sources, the leaked data includes sensitive information, such as social security numbers and other personally identifying information along with some confidential psychological assessments of students, contract and legal documents, business records, and numerous database entries.
Thank you to our students, families and employees for doing their part in the ongoing recovery from this cyberattack. pic.twitter.com/K8VhiFmSbL
— Alberto M. Carvalho (@LAUSDSup) October 2, 2022
LAUSD stated that the organization will notify anyone who is affected by the incident, but analyzing 500 GB of data will definitely take some time. Also, other threat actors may use the leaked information to launch their own attacks, especially phishing attacks. According to cybersecurity experts, this is not the first time that the gang is targeting an education-related organization. A threat analyst from Emsisoft, Brett Callow stated that the Vice Society ransomware gang has attacked at least eight other US school districts and colleges or universities in 2022. LAUSD said,
« Unfortunately, as expected, data was recently released by a criminal organization. In partnership with law enforcement, our experts are analyzing the full extent of this data release.
We have set up a hotline, available starting tomorrow morning at 6:00 am Pt. This hotline will assist those from our school communities who may have questions or need additional support. »