Fall River schools cyberattacked chief says no insurance

pFALL RIVER The citys public school computers will be down for the rest of the week after a cybersecurity attack infiltrated the districts internal system and a solution may cost the School Department out of pocket ppAt a joint meeting of the School Committee and City Council on Tuesday afternoon Superintendent Tracy Curley told officials We will be without service for the rest of the week ppThe cyberattack was discovered Monday leaving the district without access to email or the internet ppCurley also told city officials they do not have insurance to mitigate fallout of what happened the cost of data recovery will need to be paid out of pocket ppWe will know more in the next couple of days and whether there is a cost attached to getting up to fully functional again Curley said ppNo excuses Fall River schools chief Curley on MCAS staffing shortages bullyingppSources inside the school system say students have not been allowed to use the internet or their Chromebooks or carry those computers into classrooms many students have been doing lessons on paper only ppThe schools phone lines are still operational ppSome schools in the district were meant to start MCAS testing this week that has since been postponed ppIt is unknown if the cyberattack will be resolved before the district leaves for April vacation on Thursday April 17 ppIn a statement Monday night Curley said At this time there is no evidence that any student or staff personal data was accessed or misused If that changes we will immediately notify anyone who has been affected ppShe also stated that law enforcement is involved in the investigation ppCurley has not specified the exact nature of the cyberattack or how it manifested itself or if hackers are demanding a ransom other local school systems and government agencies have fallen victim to ransomware attacks where data is encrypted or locked and hackers will only decrypt or unlock it if paid a ransom usually in cryptocurrency ppIts not the first time that network systems at local organizations have proven vulnerable to attacks from hackers which can sometimes take weeks to resolve ppIn 2013 Swansea police paid off scammers who encrypted several files in their computer system and held them for ransom paying 750 then the value of two Bitcoins ppIn 2019 the city of New Bedford suffered a major ransomware attack with criminals demanding 53 million in Bitcoin The city counteroffered 400000 from insurance proceeds when this was rejected the city worked with tech support to successfully recover the datappSomerset Berkley Regional High School was hit with a ransomware attack in 2020 Newport schools were hit with malware in 2019 and Brockton police suffered a cyberattack in the summer of 2021 that knocked network systems offline ppIn December 2022 Bristol Community College was the victim of a ransomware attack that affected all campuses for weeks The next month Swansea Public Schools shut down for a day a ransomware attack of its own p