LA Valley College and Victorian Human Rights Commission become latest Cyber Attack victims

Valley Glen’s Los Angeles Valley College became the latest cyber attack victim in the recent winter break. And this news was made official early this Wednesday by LA Community College District Chancellor Francisco Rodriguez.

What’s bad in this whole saga is that based on the advice of outside security experts the authorities of the college paid $28,000 to ransomware spreading cyber crooks in order to unlock their computer systems for access.

The attack was described by Mr. Francisco as malicious cyber activity targeting critical files. But the authorities still aren’t sure about the potential of the cyber attack as it took place over the holidays.

Los Angeles Valley College staff along with local and federal security forces are working closely on this issue to find out the repercussions of the attack. They are also eager to learn about the individual/group behind this attack.

Meanwhile, Australia’s Victorian Human Rights Commission’s website was also hacked recently. So, the authorities chose to take down the sites till the issue gets resolved.

As per our sources, an international hacking ring is said to be behind this incident. A group called AnonPlus hacked the website and posted a message on the site saying that the website has been taken down to ‘Control the masses from the corrupt’.

Later, the Victorian Human Rights Commission authorities somehow managed to gain control over the website and replaced it with a message that the ‘site is temporarily down’.

As of now, no personal data from the database seems to be compromised. Moreover, all the data stored on the server was in an encrypted format.

In recent times, reports of Cyber Attacks have increased at an alarming rate. As per Symantec Internet Security Threat Report of 2016, half a billion personal records get stolen or lost due to cyber attacks.

Reacting on this issue in a media interview, US President Elect Donald Trump said that there is nothing we can do when we trace out the culprits of cyber attacks. Instead, he added that we should work on measures to catch them red handed.

Seems to be a good plan Mr. President. But does it work in practical….?

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Naveen Goud
Naveen Goud is a writer at Cybersecurity Insiders covering topics such as Mergers & Acquisitions, Startups, Cyber Attacks, Cloud Security and Mobile Security

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