School District was Infected by Emotet Bank Trojans, over 20 servers paralyzed

School District is the United States local grassroots education administrative units. As an educational management system, the school district system not only includes various education management agencies within the school district but also includes the rights, functions, and systems of various agencies in the school district. It generally consists of multiple sections, including the District Board of Education (also known as the Board of Education), the District Board of Education (Central Administration), Superintendent and several elementary, junior and high schools.

Rockingham County school district is one of them, it is located in North Carolina, United States. Bob Wyatt, vice chairman of Rockingham School District Board of Trustees, recently confirmed that at least 20 servers in the school district were infected with malware and that the incident started with a phishing email.

Wyatt explained that the incident took place on December 11, 2017, and some school staff in the school district received emails purporting to be sent by school anti-virus software vendors. The subject of mail is “Invalid invoice,” and the malware hidden in the email link is activated after the worker opens the mail. At an emergency meeting, the board voted to hire an IT professional from IT firm ProLogic ITS to solve the problem.

Image: hidefideas

According to ProLogic, the school district contacted them on December 21. The malware in the incident was Emotet Bank Trojans. It caused a number of cyber-infrastructure downsets in the school district, including servers, storage and end-user computing devices.

After investigation, ProLogic confirmed that the malware came from three locations: Bethany Elementary School, West Rockingham Middle School and the district’s central office. Malware has not been disseminated to other schools or agencies located in the school district and no social security numbers have been disclosed or money has been stolen.

ProLogic said they signed a $ 314,000 contract with Rockingham County School District. They will provide on-site and off-site technical resources to assist district IT departments in finding and removing viruses.

Reference: tripwire