A cyber attack reportedly hit Albuquerque Public Schools, disrupting its digital systems to the core and forcing the authorities to shut the school operations consecutively for the second day on Friday, i.e. January 14th,2022.
The New Mexico’s Largest School District issued a public statement late on Thursday and confirmed that the classes will be closed for this entire weekend and stated that its IT department was thwarting such attacks from the past few weeks, but failed in doing so with the latest.
So, the school will remain shut for all the 75,000 students and staff and only administrative department along with the IT staff are expected to fulfill their duties as usual.
In the past few weeks, several companies and government entities were hit by DarkSide Ransomware. And some unconfirmed sources say that the latest attack on Albuquerque Public Schools could be of the file encrypting malware variant.
According to the statistics released by the National Center for Education in November 2020, school shut downs mentally impact 1 in every 5 students and the situation might have deteriorated further after witnessing a long school shut down because of Corona Virus Pandemic. And to the concerned, the said school district that is the country’s largest at 35th spot was the last to open as the vaccination drive started too late in entire NM when compared to other states of America.
Scott Elder, the Superintendent and the technology officer of the school district confirmed the incident by stating “We face yet another challenge” in the official video address.
