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Within the same week, a Massachusetts city and an external school district were both compromised in security breaches, according to Boston.com.
Springfield Public Schools was forced to temporarily pause operations after a level 4 severity cyberattack. All students and staff were advised to stay off of the school networks. The school officials warned that as classes resume, they may be forced to remain offline.
The school held an emergency meeting to strategize and discuss network security options going forward.
The school shutdown, starting September 8th, was around the same time as Everett city was forced to temporarily suspend some of the town functions due to another attack. These breaches appear to be unrelated.
With the rise of cyberattacks, it is crucial to secure your systems with multi-factor authentication before it is too late. Green Rocket Security offers security solutions that can meet your MFA needs. Check out our website for more information.
Green Rocket Security has added RadSec to the supported protocols. RadSec is a secure extension of RADIUS that uses TCP and TLS to encrypt all RADIUS communications, providing stronger protection
Over 30 water systems in Minnesota were targeted by a series of cyberattacks this past July. These water systems and operations were compromised, temporarily leaving some cities with a limited
We have released a new Windows Logon MFA agent version (v2.9.21-N). If your GreenRADIUS license enables the U2F Module (used for Windows Logon MFA), and you have not received the
Authentication
Thousands of school districts in the US use the software system, Power School, as a tool to manage student and teacher information. Over 60 million students have data stored with this software. This past December the system was hacked causing disruption for many school districts across the country.
Using stolen credentials a hacker or group was able to access large amounts of personal information through the customer support portal.
At least two anonymous school districts have confirmed that even historical data has been stolen from former students, as well as current.
TechCrunch states that, “PowerSchool have told TechCrunch that hackers accessed ‘all’ of their historical student and teacher data.” From some commentary by RootED’s executive chief, the article continues that, “some school districts are reporting the number of affected students in the range of four- to 10-times higher than the number of actively enrolled students in their district.”
Another source claimed that data has been stolen even prior to December. On top of this, it has been found that school districts which only formerly used PowerSchool have also been affected by this breach.
Some accusations claim that PowerSchool failed to implement basic software protection, such as multi-factor authentication. When TechCrunch reached out to a PowerSchool spokesperson, she answered that their software did have MFA but did not make any further comment.
The scale of this data breach remains unknown, although multiple school districts have disclosed their effects, and more continue to do so as well.
To prevent such disaster, secure the data under your charge with multi-factor authentication. Contact us to find out how GreenRADIUS can provide this safety for your customers and your team.
A large-scale cyber-attack was confirmed earlier this week that includes breaches into United States federal government agencies. On Monday, SolarWinds confirmed that Orion – its flagship network management software – had served as the unwitting...
Weak passwords and cross-site password reuse are two of the most common ways to break into a WordPress installation. Fortunately, WordPress plugins are able to augment the system’s default authentication. Our GreenRADIUS WordPress Authentication Plugin...
General
The Belgian hospital AZ Monica was hit with a cyberattack in January, followed by a major disruption to all operations. The hospital warned patients that it was running on limited capacity.
BleepingComputer reported, “AZ Monica was forced to shut down all servers, cancel scheduled procedures, and transfer critical patients earlier today due to a cyberattack.”
All non-urgent operations were postponed. The hospital’s emergency department and intensive care transport units were unable to operate. Care continued only in urgent cases and for existing patients who were previously receiving treatment. Seven patients were moved to other hospitals for critical, uninterrupted care.
Hospitals are a high-value target for cybercriminals, as they store large amounts of sensitive data and personal information. Whether a hospital or any organization storing sensitive data, it is so important to have this backed up by multi-factor authentication.
Green Rocket Security offers a solution to protect your data and keep your systems secure. Visit this link to get started today.
We are excited to announce the release of GreenRADIUS v4.0! With this release, GreenRADIUS becomes even more versatile to meet various customer requirements. Among the most important changes are the following: FIPS 140-2 compliance Containerization...
Checking the National Day Calendar today, I see that it is World Password Day. I found it interesting that the primary website dedicated to this seems not to have been updated since last year (maybe...
News
Cyber attacks are on the rise. Schools from, elementary to university-level, are especially vulnerable for multiple reasons.
The Guardian reported that schools were nearly twice as likely as private businesses to experience data breaches.
NPR breaks down why that could be the case.
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/11/1236995412/cybersecurity-hackers-schools-ransomware
Schools rely heavily on computer systems for a variety of functions, from taking attendance to uploading grades. They’re often among the largest employers especially in smaller communities; school records contain large amounts of sensitive information about students and employees. Hence, data breaches on schools can have catastrophic domino effects leading to identity theft and financial losses, either through theft itself or the cost of recovery.
Whether it’s through a ransomware attack or some other method, attackers exploit key vulnerabilities especially related to identity and access management (IAM). Preventing hacks in this area is as simple as using strong passwords, keeping software up to date, and most importantly using two-factor authentication. 2FA could be a physical token like a YubiKey, user verification through fingerprints or other biometrics, or a one-time password through an app like Google or Microsoft Authenticator.
Green Rocket Security understands that keeping your school’s data safe should be simple and affordable. Contact us today for a demo.
The recent discovery of the Blast-RADIUS vulnerability (CVE-2024-3596) poses a significant risk to networks worldwide. This flaw in the RADIUS authentication protocol can be exploited by attackers to gain unauthorized access, launch denial-of-service attacks, and...
SUMMARY This notice covers CVE-2024-6387 OpenSSH vulnerability (nicknamed “regreSSHion”) and its impact related to GreenRADIUS. GreenRADIUS is accessed using SSH from an internal (on prem) origin and therefore normally protected by an external firewall. This...
New Threats
Are you using a password manager to securely store all of your passwords? The use of password managers has become very common. It allows people to keep track of a variety of passwords, which are unique enough to protect their networks.
Although the purpose of this is to keep your passwords together in a secure manner, cases have been found in which these password managers have mistakenly leaked credentials. This flaw in the system has been named “AutoSpill”.
TechSpot recently reported that the way this happens is, “When the password manager is prompted to fill in the credentials, the expected behavior is that it’ll autofill them in the right fields of the WebView interface. However, it will sometimes expose your credentials to the base app instead.”
In this case there is no phishing or trick that the user can avoid, the mistake is automatically done through the password manager itself.
Having multi-factor authentication protects your network against the AutoSpill glitch or in any situation where your password has been exposed. This is because the password itself is not sufficient to gain access to your sensitive information.
Green Rocket Security specializes in multi-factor authentication by which users can have access to an Authenticator app or a physical token, such as a YubiKey. If you are looking for network protection beyond just your passwords, contact us to learn more about our GreenRADIUS solution.
Summary CVE-2021-44228 and CVE-2021-45046 (Log4Shell or LogJam) are both zero-day vulnerabilities in the widely used Apache Log4j Java-based logging library. Since it is widely used in many popular products, customers have contacted Green Rocket Security...
LokiBot Trojan Malware (a.k.a LukiBot, Lokibot, Loki PWS, and Loki-bot) is active again stealing sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, cryptocurrency wallets, and other credentials. It was first discovered in 2015 and has been used...