Ransomware attack forces high school in London to close and send students home
A high school in south London has announced it will be closed for the first half of this week due to a ransomware attack, leaving approximately 1,300 students in the lurch.
Students were sent home from the Charles Darwin School on Thursday, with a letter from the headteacher Aston Smith following them on Friday to warn parents that the IT issue students had been told of was “worse than hoped” and actually a ransomware incident.
The letter confirmed that the school would be “closed Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday” as “all staff devices have been removed to be cleansed” and teachers will need time to re-plan lessons, while senior staff will have to create systems to continue running the school.
“All students have had their [Microsoft] 365 accounts disabled as a precaution. If you receive an email from an unusual email address we ask that you are vigilant. We will never send any attachments or links during the recovery process,” the letter stated.
It added that the school might have to take further measures based on new information in the weeks ahead and warned “there is the potential for all information held by the school to have been accessed.”
An unnamed cyber security company is currently completing a forensic investigation, said the school, but the headteacher warned that until this is completed he would not be able to provide further details on the data breach.
Major UK stations targeted with terrorism message in cyber security incident
Manchester Piccadilly’s Wi-Fi system was compromised in a cyber security incident, sparking an immediate investigation after all 20 Network Rail-managed stations became targets.
Customers attempting to use the Wi-Fi were redirected to a webpage, which the Manchester Evening News has viewed. This page, titled ‘We love you, Europe,’ contains content on terror attacks within the UK and elsewhere, with discernible anti-Islamic undertones.
Arkansas City Responds to Cyber security Incident at Water Facility, Ensures Safe Drinking Water
Arkansas City, Kansas, experienced a cyber security incident on Sunday, September 22, 2024, involving its Water Treatment Facility. While the nature of the incident has yet to be fully disclosed, the city government emphasized that the water supply remains safe and that no disruption to service has occurred. The Arkansas City water treatment cyberattack incident prompted the city to take precautionary measures and transition the water treatment operations to manual control as part of their response.
TfL faces ‘ongoing cyber security incident’
Transport for London’s (TfL) computer systems have been targeted in an ongoing cyber attack.
It said there was no evidence customer data had been compromised and there was currently no impact on TfL services.
Insiders have told BBC London they have been asked to work at home if possible, and that it is the transport provider’s backroom systems at the corporate headquarters that are mainly affected.
TfL’s chief technology officer Shashi Verma said: “We have introduced a number of measures to our internal systems to deal with an ongoing cyber security incident.”
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