Ransomware hits Louisiana schools state of emergency declared

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards on Wednesday declared a state of emergency after three public school districts were seized by ransomware.

According to local news station KSLA, one of the affected school districts, Sabine Parish in northern Louisiana, released this statement on Wednesday night:

The Sabine Parish School System was hit with an electronic virus early Sunday morning. This virus has disabled some of our technology systems and our central office phone system. The district staff reported this electronic viral attack to local law enforcement, state officials and the FBI. All available resources are being utilized to get the district systems back online. An investigation involving local, state and federal law enforcement is ongoing at this time. The school phone systems were not affected by this attack. The central office phone system is being repaired and service will be restored as soon as possible. According to the Louisiana Department of Education, several other school districts were attacked by the same virus this week.

We haven’t seen details yet on what ransomware variant was inflicted in the attack; nor have state officials released a comprehensive list of the affected systems.

Eddie Jones, principal of Florien High School in Sabine Parish, told KSLA that his technology supervisor got an alert on his phone around 4am Sunday about a surge in bandwidth usage. It was particularly unusual given the time of day and the fact that the schools are all on summer break.

When technical staff investigated, Jones said, they found ransomware on the servers.

The principal said that he doesn’t believe that any sensitive information was lost. What was lost: “anything and everything” stored on the school district’s servers, including 17 years’ worth of Jones’ personal documents – his speeches, test schedules, master schedules and more.

The declaration of a state of emergency means that state resources will be made available and that assistance will be coming from cybersecurity experts from the Louisiana National Guard, Louisiana State Police, the Office of Technology Services and others to assist local governments in responding to the crisis and in preventing further data loss.