DisclosureLens
GLOBALUnknownRansomwareAkiraLow

Middlesex County Public Schools

bd_181ea3f6b13f5d17 · schema v1 · pii pii-v1

Severity

Low

Discovered

Filed

Jun 1, 2023

To disclose

Affected

Not disclosed

Linked

2 filings

Confidence

60%
Full breach record for Middlesex County Public Schools

Press / market disclosure — not a breach-notification filing

A media or market posting that confirms an incident but carries no breach-notification fields, so compliance clocks aren't assessable. The summary below is extracted from the coverage — verify against the source.

Superintendent confirms Middlesex County Public Schools hit with ransomware attack. Middlesex County Public Schools: The Middlesex County school system was the victim of a ransomware attack. Authorities are investigating the incident with the help of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. School officials are seeking to determine if information about students and staff has been compromised. Cyberattacks are a major concern for school districts due to the risk to student records. School districts have significant protections in place to prevent these types of issues. Linked ransomware group: akira.

Incident timeline — mostly unverified

? — ?

Breach window unknown

Jun 1, 2023

Press report

Corroborated · see linked filings

Compliance clocks stay unassessable until a regulatory filing lands. Dashed segments fill in automatically when corroboration arrives.

Attack → press

Compliance clock

Not assessable

This filing is one of 2 about the same incident.View merged incident

Linked disclosures

Why this link?

Ransomware claims (1)

Evidence ladder

Leak-site claim

Attacker assertion only. Establishes: claim date, group, alleged victim.

Press / market reportThis record

Unlocks: incident narrative, operational impact. Still no compliance clock.

State AG / regulator filing

Unlocks: discovery date, data types, affected count, compliance clock.

SEC 8-K / victim statement

Unlocks: materiality, stated response, full audit trail. Ceiling removed.

Source ceiling

  • incident type + narrative only (may be machine-translated)
  • discovery date
  • materiality
  • affected count
  • data types
  • compliance clock

The ✕ fields stay blank until a regulatory filing or victim disclosure lands.

About this groupFirst seen 2023-04-12

akira

According to ransomware.live, The Akira ransomware group is said to have emerged in March 2023, and there's much speculation about its ties to the former CONTI ransomware group. It's worth noting that with the end of CONTI's operation, several affiliates migrated to independent campaigns such as Royal, BlackBasta, and others. According to some reports, Akira affiliates also work with other ransomware operations, such as Snatch and BlackByte, as an open directory of tools used by an Akira operator was identified, which also had connections to the Snatch ransomware. The first version of the Akira ransomware was written in C++ and appended files with the '.akira' extension, creating a ransom note named 'akira_readme.txt,' partially based on the Conti V2 source code. However, on June 29, 2023, a decryptor for this version was reportedly released by Avast. Subsequently, a version was released that fixed the decryption flaw on July 2, 2023. Since then, the new version is said to be written in Rust, this time called 'megazord.exe,' and it changes the extension to '.powerranges' for encrypted files. Most of Akira's initial access vectors use brute-force attempts on Cisco VPN devices (which use single-factor authentication only). Additionally, exploitation of CVEs: CVE-2019-6693 and CVE-2022-40684 for initial access has been identified. Source: https://github.com/crocodyli/ThreatActors-TTPs

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