The personal information, including names, dates of birth, addresses, and Social Security numbers of former students in a South Carolina school district, was posted online following a data breach.
The Lexington-Richland 5 school district confirmed the breach that occurred on June 3 and said that law enforcement has confirmed the attack came from the cyber group Interlock, which is believed to be operated overseas.
Information posted online was to a forum used by threat actors, district officials said. Officials are in the process of informing those whose information was leaked and offering credit monitoring and identity theft protection.
While the attack has been found to have only targeted former students so far, district officials said that they are also providing those same protections for staff.
“We did not want to wait until our investigation was complete before offering them this important benefit,” said Akil Ross, Sr., superintendent of the Lexington-Richland 5 school district.
“Our investigation is ongoing, and we will be notifying additional individuals on a rolling basis if we determine they were impacted by this incident,” Ross added. “Until our investigation is complete, we are not able to comment or speculate accurately on individual claims about suspected data security issues. We must let our investigation run its course.”
Officials said that they first detected the breach after finding unusual network activity that impacted certain operations, which they then addressed by securing their network. The district’s IT team worked with law enforcement and specialists to investigate the incident and restore files and systems.
Currently, a data mining expert is reviewing forensic data to determine if any personal information was stolen.
“This is a rising trend that we’re seeing with global threat actors attacking institutions like school districts,” said Ross in a video accompanying written statements.
District officials noted that while schools are “responding in the best possible manner,” there “does not appear to be a great deal of federal response to apprehend the perpetrators and prevent school districts from being victimized.”
A virtual town hall will be held on Aug. 26 to provide more information in coordination with the FBI on ongoing investigations.