761 people were directly affected by data theft at the Basel Department of Education (ED). The ED announced this on Thursday after analyzing the files made accessible by the hackers on the dark web.
Files “containing potentially sensitive personal content” were stolen from the 761 people and published, the statement says. Another 372 people only published standard impersonal files with no sensitive content.
According to the Ministry of Education, more than 30,000 users are registered in the hacked eduBS network. About 3 percent are directly affected by the cyber attack. A group of cybercriminals stole files from a total of 1133 education server accounts and posted them on the dark web.
The history
What has the investigation of the leaked data revealed?
The Digitization and Informatics department of the ED has analyzed the data directories. These provide information about the owners of the data and the file names, but not the content. These have not been checked for data protection reasons.
The files available on the dark web may contain information about third parties. This can be an address list of a school class. In this case, the concerned teacher who saved this list has been identified, but not the listed students.
The IT department personally contacted the affected users and asked them for help in identifying indirectly affected individuals.
In addition, the 30,000 users of the education platform have the option of doing a self-check by e-mail. They should then get an answer as to whether they have been affected by the data theft.
In January 2023, the ransomware band Bianlian hacked into a computer in the network of the Ministry of Education. This with the aim of extorting money under threat of data publication on the Darknet.
According to its own statements, the ED has not responded to the attempted blackmail. A few weeks ago, links to the stolen files appeared on the dark web – on the leak site of the allegedly responsible ransomware gang.
Sources
- bd.bs.ch: Data Theft: Frequently Asked Questions and Answers (FAQ)
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Source: Watson
I’m Ella Sammie, author specializing in the Technology sector. I have been writing for 24 Instatnt News since 2020, and am passionate about staying up to date with the latest developments in this ever-changing industry.
