Brit college forced to shift all teaching online for a week while it picks up the pieces from ransomware attack
- Reference: 1615984810
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/03/17/south_city_birmingham_college_ransomware/
- Source link:
South and City College Birmingham (SCCB) has told its 13,000 students that all lectures will now be delivered via the web – and has urged them to stay away from the college's campuses for the rest of this week.
[1]
"The College has suffered a major ransomware attack on our IT system which has disabled many of our core IT systems," the institute said in a note to students posted on its website. "The College buildings will be closed to students for a week from Monday 15th March to allow our IT specialists to fix the problem."
Younger students - the 14 to 16-year olds getting vocational and academic qualifications at the college - will start to [2]return on Monday , the college said.
[3]
There was no further information about the identity of the ransomware crew involved. We have asked SCCB for comment.
The FE Week news website for higher education professionals [4]reported earlier this week that "servers and workstations connected to [the college's] domain" had been ransacked by criminals, with "a volume of data" being exfiltrated.
The authorities and the Information Commissioner's Office have been informed, according to FE Week.
Ransomware attacks are fairly commonplace in the COVID-19 era after much of the world shifted to remote working. It is relatively unusual for an organisation to state outright that it has been hit by ransomware, with most British orgs (including the University of the Highlands and Islands) preferring the coy phrase [5]"cyber incident" .
Educational bodies are merely the latest fashionable target among ransomware extortionists. Typically their attacks consist of either finding a vulnerable device on a target network and entering it through that, or a staffer opening a malware-laden email attachment. Either way, the criminals gain a foothold in the network from where they can deploy their software.
The ransomware itself works, as most Reg readers know, by encrypting all the files on the network and leaving a ransom note with contact details for the extortionists. In return for a hefty payout, usually seven figures, the criminals offer to send the decryption key to the victim. Variations on the theme include searching for and destroying backups as part of the attack; persisting in a target network for a period of time to poison regular backup runs; and stealing copies of sensitive and valuable data to ransom off separately.
This form of criminality has become very high profile, not least because of news reporting but also because its perpetrators fancy themselves as a cut above ordinary criminals – and some people buy into that self-created image.
Unethical
Infosec company Recorded Future, perhaps unwisely, gave a ransomware criminal claiming to be the leader of the REvil gang [6]a platform from which the extortionist bragged about his "brand reputation".
The podcasters are not alone: the lure of ransomware gangs' infamy has also tempted the BBC, which last year [7]seemingly allowed itself to be used as a force multiplier by a ransomware gang negotiating a payoff with a victim.
Recorded Future published a screenshot from a cybercrime forum where one crook boasted of making "calls to the media… to exert maximum pressure" on ransomware victims. Evidently the threat intel firm's staffer didn't make the connection between their own activity and the manipulation practised by the crooks.
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The standard British government advice used to be never to pay a demanded ransom, and that is still sound advice today. In recent months the National Cyber Security Centre's line has shifted somewhat, [9]opening the door to cyber-insurance providers who'll buy off extortionists on their clients' behalf. ®
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[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YFI1qvLQKViUAfLXSY1BMgAAAJg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://www.sccb.ac.uk/latest-news/item/800-college-closed-following-cyber-security-breach-essential-info-for-students
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YFI1qvLQKViUAfLXSY1BMgAAAJg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://feweek.co.uk/2021/03/15/college-group-closes-all-campuses-for-a-week-following-major-cyber-attack/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/08/uni_highlands_islands_cyber_incident/
[6] https://therecord.media/i-scrounged-through-the-trash-heaps-now-im-a-millionaire-an-interview-with-revils-unknown/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/29/ucsf_1_14m_dollar_ransom_paid_netwalker/
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YFI1qvLQKViUAfLXSY1BMgAAAJg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/06/ncsc_cyber_insurance_guidance/
[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
23 months for me to go, before I am out of IT for good...
It's not just a matter of backup and restore processes
Just because data can be restored doesn't mean that it's that simple. Restoring data onto a compromised system is a bit pointless. How do you know the systems are no longer compromised? You rebuild them from scratch, that's how. That's slow and fraught with potential problems. The least of the problems is rebuilding the data from a backup. User credentials may need to be reset, databases recreated, users needing to be alerted.
The important thing is to find how the breach occurred and patch whatever it was if it was a vulnerability, or if it's through an email, finding how it happened so it doesn't happen the same way again. This is why penetration testing, user education, anti-phishing training and better email security are all key.
These days, the perpetrators of this ransomware stuff are really clever and it's not just a matter of one PC and a few thousand files. As the article says, the backups may be poisoned too.
Bulking up security and better backups are just part of the equation. Tracking these thugs is the other part. Governments which obstruct efforts to find the crims should be sanctioned in much the same way as unruly potential nuclear powers are. And governments which fund these activities (we're looking at you, Norks) need to be even more heavily sanctioned until they start to behave.
Re: It's not just a matter of backup and restore processes
Shhhhh, you’ll confuse the silly wankers
I just wish these cunts in overpaid positions would have their fat faces smashed and rubbed into this, with someone screaming at them, suck it up cunt!!
I’d pay to see that, no seriously, I would fucking pay
A widespread problem?
Interestingly my partner's University (located in London) was disabled over Christmas by a ransomware attack. Presumably they didn't pay up because its only now that some of the services are being restored. Shocking - trying to stop ransomware getting through is very hard and you can never be sure. Fixing an attack should therefore have been a planned process in days for mission critical stuff and weeks for the rest not months! But i'm guessing the VC's latest extortionate pay rise was more important than the IT budget.
Plus I'm guessing that integration which used to be a good idea hasn't been reversed into compartmentalisation when you know part of the network will be compromised at some time.
Maybe Christmas hols/aperitifs were responsible for it not being picked up by our neighbourhood vultures. But were there more?
"a cut above ordinary criminals"
A cut below, actually. They would gettheir asses kicked by any "ordinary" criminal in a face-to-face encounter.
And "ordinary" criminals do not target hospitals, mdeical centers or places of learning. You have be a miscreant with a keyboard to think of that.
Re: "a cut above ordinary criminals"
au contraire, some of the criminals overseeing the whole thing are indeed the same criminals who shoot each other over turf. I've read anecdotal stories of young 'hacker types' being pressganged into working for big crime syndicates' cybercrime divisions on pain of their family meeting an untimely end.
opening the door to cyber-insurance providers who'll buy off extortionists
in plain English: crime pays and we can do fuckall about it.
Im sure they can wheel out their overpaid “leadership” staff to unfuck the mess.
Their salaries probably suggest they are very talented, so will have no issues unfucking this themselves
Fucking pricks
I'd hang them.
nuke them from orbit
Hasn't our (idiot) Prime Minister put in an order for more trident warheads for precisely this purpose.
On a more practical note, it seems to me that organisations are going to need to invest in robust backup and restore processes and systems so as to not be vulnerable to these scumbags.