Hackers Use Stolen Student Data Against Minneapolis Schools in Brazen New Threat

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 NewsletterMinneapolis Public Schools appears to be the latest ransomware target in a $1 million extortion scheme that came to light Tuesday after a shady cyber gang posted to the internet a ream of classified documents it claims it stole from the district.  While districts nationwide have become victims in a rash of devastating ransomware attacks in the last several years, cybersecurity experts said the extortion tactics leveraged against the Minneapolis district are particularly aggressive and an escalation of those typically used against school systems to coerce payments. In a dark web blog post and an online video uploaded Tuesday, the ransomware gang Medusa claimed responsibility for conducting a February cyberattack — or what Minneapolis school leaders euphemistically called an “encryption event” — that led to widespread digital disruptions. The blog post gives the district until March 17 to hand over $1 million. If the district fails to pay up, criminal actors appear ready to post a trove of sensitive records about students and educators to their dark web leak site. The gang’s leak site gives the district the option to pay $50,000 to add a day to the
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